


Impossible Odds

by FictionPenned



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alex asked why we even have this lever, Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Anxiety, Depression, Discussions of death, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Mentions of addiction, PTSD, Trauma, again very on par with the books in terms of content warning and presentation, also all of the normal hunger games content warnings apply, if it's in the books, it feels dumb to use the doctor and the master in this setting, it's probably here too, names are stupid, so use that as your gauge, we're using theta and koschei because like
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:00:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 53
Words: 166,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22469758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: Koschei's name was drawn the year before hers, and he slaughtered almost half the tribute field personally, claiming the first victory for their District and becoming an overnight sensation. Media darling Caesar Flickerman had dubbed him The Master, a title that stuck, and he plays his part well, but as soon as the cameras are off, darkness always comes floating back towards the surface. He mentored Theta while his own pain was still fresh, and dismissed her as a lost cause as soon as the second name was drawn. The other tribute for District 3 that year was Koschei's friend, classmate, and neighbor, and Koschei all but told her that he would throw her to the wolves and focus the entirety of his attention on supporting her male counterpart.That favoritism did not matter in the end. His friend died first, and Theta won the shortest games on record. Thirty-six hours, one meticulously engineered mass slaughter, and it was over.Fifteen years have passed since then, and he still has not forgiven her.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 1179
Kudos: 1089
Collections: Start Reading





	1. Chapter 1

She’s late. Again.    
  
Theta is always late on Reaping Day. Partially because time has a habit of slipping away from her, but mostly because she dreads the anxiety that settles over the gathered crowds as the names are drawn. It makes her antsy, knowing that in a single moment, two children and their families are forced to quickly come to terms with the fragility of mortality. Tributes from District 3 almost never win the games, and even when they do, the best case scenario still leaves one of them dead. It’s a cruel system designed by cruel people, and if she could get away with refusing to participate altogether, she would. Unfortunately, her name was drawn fifteen years ago and she won, which locked her into an endless cycle of mentoring and connecting with new tributes only to watch them lose their lives over and over again in front of a mass audience. 

She no longer has enough fingers to count the pieces of her broken heart, and every year, she feels as though she’s dancing closer and closer to the edge of her sanity. She doesn’t blame the group of victors who seek comfort in morphling and alcohol. She probably would, too, if she wasn’t too far gone for it to fix anything. 

Boots skid on the pavement as she sprints around the corner. Heads turn in her direction, but they all look away as soon as they see the billowing coat and the familiar flash of blonde hair. Being a victor means that everyone knows your face and your name and the exact price that you paid for victory. She spilled less blood than some, but more blood than most, and she cursed herself by doing so  _ creatively _ . At the time, it seemed easier to use engineering to distance herself from the reality of her actions, but in hindsight, it left too much of an impact. People remember  _ exactly _ what she did and how she did it, and the only way they could collectively process it was by declaring her mad. That was not true when she was an exhausted, blood-stained fourteen-year-old, but it is certainly true now. 

No one bothers to stop her when she leaps over the barrier at the checkpoint. They station the same sentries here every year, and they know the drill. At this point, they’d probably get in more trouble if they bothered to stop her than by letting her pass without identification.    
  
She weaves through rows of shipping containers and makeshift curtains, ducking under the arm of a representative from the Capitol who is already stuttering about her appearance, and avoiding eye contact with a dozen people whose names and jobs she never bothered to learn. Eventually, she comes to rest next to a familiar figure. Straight-backed, hostile, in a neatly pressed purple suit that complements the warm brown of his skin.    
  
He cocks his head at her, and his eyes take their time as he sweeps over the sorry state of her clothes, her heaving chest, and the disheveled mess of her hair. After a long moment of tense silence, he turns his gaze back forward and comments “You look like you’ve been in a wind tunnel.”

Her nose wrinkles in distaste as bitter sarcasm drips from her tongue. “Live in one, actually. You should try it. Very cozy.” 

Koschei has always possessed the uncanny ability to place her ill at ease. His name was drawn the year before hers, and he slaughtered almost half the tribute field personally, claiming the first victory for their District and becoming an overnight sensation. Media darling Caesar Flickerman had dubbed him The Master, a title that stuck, and he plays his part well. He offers up smiles in photos and charming jokes in interviews, but as soon as the cameras are off, darkness always comes floating back towards the surface. He mentored Theta while his own pain was still fresh, and dismissed her as a lost cause as soon as the second name was drawn.  The other tribute for District 3 that year was Koschei's friend, classmate, and neighbor, and Koschei all but told her that her would not advocate on her behalf for sponsorships or assistance, choosing to instead throw her to the wolves and focus the entirety of his attention on supporting her male counterpart.

That favoritism did not matter in the end. His friend died first, and Theta won the shortest games on record. Thirty-six hours, one meticulously engineered mass slaughter, and it was over.    
  
Fifteen years have passed since then -- fifteen years spent frequenting the same events and being forced to occupy the same space on an annual basis -- and he still has not forgiven her. 

“Does your wind tunnel have a closet, or do you still only own the one coat?” 

It takes Theta a moment to process that he’s still speaking to her. Despite seeing each other regularly, the pair is not prone to conversation. Often, Koschei offers up a single, cruel quip and then proceeds to ignore her, but it must be a ‘twisting the knife’ kind of day. It makes sense; Reaping Day is the perfect time for misery. 

“People are starving. Besides, I only need one co-  _ OW! _ ” She yelps as someone behind her attempts to drag a comb through her hair, nearly jumping out of her skin in shock. Eyes narrow as she pivots, seeking out the offender. It’s a small girl, so mousy that the flash and pomp of Capitol fashion almost seems to drown her as she draws back, afraid of the fear and rage that flash in the victor’s eyes. 

“You could ask first. Valuable thing, consent. Opens a lot of doors that might otherwise be closed,” Theta says icily, turning back to Koschei as she hears a quiet chuckle creep through the air. “ _ What _ ?”

His eyes turn towards the open sky above them, filled to the brim with endless amusement. “These people offered us up as sacrifices without asking our permission, do you think they’ll start drawing the line at combing tangles?”

“Have to start somewhere, don’t they?” 

It’s a rhetorical question with dangerous implications, and both she and Koschei know better than to debate its specifics in a forum so public. Though he has minimal association with her and thus is at little risk of being labelled an enemy of the state and disposed of accordingly, she has always been kept at arm’s length in the Capitol. She was banned from state dinners four years ago for a badly timed speech on the morality of consumption, and had come perilously close to blows with a television host on his own show. The President had offered her a list of action items that would permit her re-entry into both the media circuit and those upper echelons of society outside of the context of mentoring during the Games. The first seven bullet points had revolved around settling into a respectable marriage. She hadn’t bothered to read any of the others before tossing the damned thing into the fire. 

“ _ Theta! _ ” The name floats through the air, carried by a slight breeze and a familiar voice.    
  
Theta’s eyes roll, but she turns around to find herself crushed in a hug. The brim of a hat threatens to gouge out one of her eyes, and she very delicately raises a hand to hold it aside until the embrace is over.    
  
“You really shouldn’t snap at the team, they mean well, and you look disastrous,” the hugger says with a wide smile as she takes a step back, beaming up at them with a wide smile. It is too kind of a smile to belong here, too wholesome a person to be clothed in the garish clothes of the Capitol and participating in the ghoulish spectacle of the Games, but Theta had long ago accepted the fact that just as she had done what she needed to do to survive in this world, so, too, does everyone else within it. She does not blame the flock for the misconduct of the shepherd, even if she sometimes berates them for following along so blindly.    
  
Theta bristles slightly at the condemnation of her appearance, but the woman’s enthusiasm always throws her a bit too far out of step to bite back properly. She is unused to people being happy to see her. 

“Still playing this part, Romana?” 

“Upward mobility is limited these days. I did apply for something else, but it was insisted that I remain here. I don’t mind. It is a privilege to be allowed to travel, and it means that I get to see you!” A hint of sadness creeps into Romana’s gaze, but it does not linger long. She is practiced at the art of separating oneself from one’s work. It is the only way to keep moving forward during times as dark as these. 

A grumble wafts through the air between them as Koschei interjects, “Means a great many other things as well, does it not?” 

“Best not to dwell on the negative,” she quips, before turning her attention back to the female victor. “Now, would you  _ please _ \--”   
  
The words are interrupted by the pompous, unsettling tones of the anthem pouring out of the many speakers on the other side of the curtain. A shiver of dread spreads from Theta’s chest to her toes, and it takes every ounce of her willpower to keep from racing back the way she came. She had done that once before, and the repercussions had been nasty. It would seem that Panem only values cowardice when that cowardice is convenient for them, and not when it speaks to the pain and fear that races through the veins of everyone who has been subjected to the cruelty of their Games. 

“It’s our cue,” Romana says, tone so calm as to be nigh inscrutable. A needless announcement, really. The three of them have done this same song and dance year-in and year-out for over a decade, but there is some scant comfort to be found in pretending that they haven’t. It is always easier to feign innocence than admit culpability. 

Theta takes up her position at the back of the line, sulking out onto the stage two and a half steps behind her counterpart, and choosing to stand just far enough behind the little mark that has been taped onto the floor so as to be out of focus when the cameras decide to cut to them. It is a tiny act of rebellion, just innocent enough to be brushed off as a mistake if no one is paying attention to her pattern of behavior, but she knows that there is an entire team dedicated to taking notes and cutting together a reel of her insubordination to play before the court, should she ever be taken to trial. Provided, of course, that they even bother to offer her the illusion of justice.

She crosses her hands in front of her and settles into the wait, grateful that her only job is to stand and look solemn. She doesn’t have to draw names, doesn’t have to read them, doesn’t even have to look at their faces until later. Of course, that does nothing to make the air any less stifling or the atmosphere any less tense, but it is a tiny grace in an unforgiving world. 

Romana's tightly scripted speech is always the same. It speaks of the glory and honor of the Games, what an honor it is to be chosen, the peace that has come as a result, the riches that await the victor. Though Theta had not been alive for the first games, she had heard that some people used to cheer during these announcements, used to buy into these lies and believe in the bright future that they represented. However, horror after horror and broken promise after broken promise had broken that trust. People in this District are poor and angry and haunted by loss. They meet the words with chilly silence. The faint cry of a baby rises from somewhere in the crowd -- the only person present who is both young and foolish enough to admit its misery.    
  
There’s a brief pause as Romana closes, storing her cards and drawing a deep breath that is barely audible through the microphone. Theta’s eyes slide sideways, eyebrow lifting at the peculiarity. Could Romanadvoratrelundar, ever the _consummate_ professional, be nervous? Fondness rises in her chest at the idea. Theta has, after all, been fighting for years to feed the flames of doubt among those who she encounters. It would be enormously satisfying if those fires are finally burning of their own accord. It is about time someone burned this horrible institution down and unseats the government that continues to fund it. 

The blaze, however, has not yet reached its peak. It is not strong enough to stop the reaping.    
  
Romana’s delicate fingers pluck first one name and then the other from the designated bowls, reading them aloud for the benefit of the crowd. Theta listens to neither, and she does her best to keep her eyes fixed on the horizon to avoid witnessing the sweep of horror that inevitably follow the announcements. It is the same every year; she does not need to experience that revulsion for yet another time. 

When they speak, the tributes’ voices sound enormously childlike. To Theta, it feels as though they get younger every year, though perhaps that is merely a side effect of her own age staggering ever higher, despite her best efforts to bait an early death. 

It is half an age before they are finally played off the stage. They exit in the same manner in which they had entered: in a tight line behind Romana, though this time, Theta finds herself stuck in the middle. 

Once they reach in the safety of the curtains, she feels strong fingers wrap around her wrist, dragging her to a halt. 

“I need to talk to you.” Koschei's words are little more than a hiss into her ear. 

The tickle of his breath sends a shiver down Theta's spine, and she twists her arm in an attempt to pull away. He doesn’t let her. 

“You never need to talk to me,” she observes, eyebrows raised in a challenge. “Fifteen years and we’ve  _ barely _ had a handful of conversations, unless you count the time you got drunk and shouted at me for forty minutes. Or the time you told me you wouldn’t help me. Or the endless string of insults. How long was the shouting in the headlines again? A couple months, I’d say. Wouldn’t risk a repeat if I were you.”

She watches, quietly simmering, as the man casts his gaze about the people around them, ensuring that nobody has taken notice of them, before he turns his attention back to her. When he speaks again, his voice remains dangerously quiet. “It really needs to happen in private. Can you meet me at my home in an hour?”

“Why? Is it atonement day? You going to finally kill me?” Theta knows that she shouldn’t taunt him, but nerves flutter in her stomach and worry coats her tongue. She has a habit of babbling her way through uncomfortable situations, perhaps because she was denied that very luxury throughout her own experience in the Games. 

“No.” An impenetrable layer of ice coats the syllable. “I was given a directive, and I think you’d rather hear it than be caught off guard later.”

Silence stretches between them as he awaits her answer, brown eyes searching for meaning in her own. She says nothing, but something must have satisfied him, because he lets her go and strides away, hands leisurely perched in his pockets as though he is doing nothing more than strolling through the marketplace on a sunny day. 

For a long moment, she stares after him, curiosity fighting against fifteen years of bitter resentment. She cannot imagine what he might have to say to her, unless it is a long string of apologies that hardly seem to be forthcoming. Her brow creases with concern as with a small groan of resignation, she shakes back the sleeve of her coat to check her watch. 

Today seems a decent enough day to die, should that be his mission.  She only hopes that it’s quick.


	2. Chapter 2

She doesn’t like his house. 

It looms over the rest of the street -- all brickwork and twisting vines and wrought iron grates -- and feels distinctly out of place. Perhaps there is a neighborhood where such an aesthetic might be at home, but if there is, Theta hasn’t seen it. Not in any of the Districts in which she had been forced to tour following her victory, and most certainly not in the grey, industrial ruin that is District 3. 

Before the Dark Days, this District thrived. It was home to innovation and marvelous feats of engineering made by brilliant minds. She can still see hints of those bygone days in the architecture in the center of town -- soaring glass buildings that had once promised success and beauty and scientific advancement. Now, however, they have been reduced to living in poverty, churning out technology designed to funnel propaganda to the struggling populous. There’s no sense of wonder in the work anymore. People merely follow the directions that they are given and pray that their wages at the end of the day will sustain them into the next. Though Theta does not have a job in the traditional sense, she flits in and out of the factories when she can get away with it, peering over shoulders and learning how the technology that they are manufacturing works, filing that information away for future use. Never know what little thing might turn out to be useful if she ever stops dragging her feet and decides to organize a proper uprising. 

The gate screeches as she eases it open and steps onto his property. The sound makes her shrink into herself in both pain and surprise, and she eyes the offending hinges with an unmistakable degree of disgust. It feels oddly careless for a person sitting upon a small fortune to allow such a simple thing to fall into disrepair, and it makes her wonder if it might have a purpose. A person does not need to bother securing their house if every unwelcome visitor is announced by the blood-curdling shriek of rusted iron. Paranoia in victors is not unusual -- she, herself, often plays host to an enormous amount of fear in the face of uncertainty -- however, Koschei has never been the typical victor. In her eyes, he has always seemed more comfortable in the role than any of their peers, and a great deal more at ease with the atrocities committed under the mantle of the Games than she could  _ ever _ be. 

Wincing, she tries to ease the gate closed behind her, moving it an inch at a time, but it does little to improve the unholy noise. In the end, she abandons the endeavor to be quiet, slamming it shut with a booted foot and a frustrated huff before shoving her hands in her coat pockets and making her way up the long drive. 

The front door swings open before she even has a chance to knock. 

“You’re five minutes late,” Koschei observes as he holds the door open, waiting for her to come inside. Something has shifted since the Reaping. Sweat gathers on his brow, and his eyes keep sweeping the landscape behind her, as if anticipated an ambush. He looks so worried, in fact, that it compels her to glance back over her own shoulder, as if she might see a ghost rising from the ground behind her. She sees nothing but gravel and gray pavement. 

“Never on time, me,” she replies as she turns her attention back to him, lifting her shoulder and tilting her head in an unbalanced shrug. “The world runs a bit fast, I run a bit slow, hard to tell which one’s right.” 

Her statement is not entirely true. Both her mind and her feet move quickly, but her attention is so prone to wandering that she has a tendency to zig-zag and double back on herself, covering the same ground over and over again despite the fact that the rest of the world has continued to trudge forward. On her way here, for instance, she stopped in a corner stall in the marketplace and spent forty minutes debating the use cases of certain magnets with the seller. They both began and ended the conversation with opposing viewpoints. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, but time wasted all the same. 

“Besides,” she adds, stepping past him and into the house, “You were the one who allocated an entire hour for travel. Weird amount of time, an hour. Too long to walk straight here, but too short to get anything done. Not useful for anything except a decent head start, really, and that’s a rather one-sided benefit, isn’t it?” 

"Theta.” The name gets caught halfway between statement and question, and the delivery is confusing enough to derail her wandering train of thought.

She drags her eyes away from the dark wood of the vaulted ceiling and turns back to him, eyebrows raised. "What?"

The muscles in Koschei's hand visibly tighten as he gestures in her direction, fingers curling as if he is a cat seeking to unsheath hidden claws and bat away a particularly annoying mouse. He takes a deep breath before he finally ventures a precariously unsteady, "Do you ever shut up?"

Theta scoffs, nose wrinkling. "And start giving people what they want?  _ Nah _ . I'm doing just fine, thanks." 

Her attention begins to wander again as she circles the room, peering around both to get a better sense of the man's lifestyle and whether or not they might be being observed. Cameras have gotten increasingly smaller and more mobile as the needs of the Games had advanced, designed to be both as unobtrusive and as mobile as possible. Makes them slippery little things. Easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for, but thankfully, she has a practiced eye. 

She spots one in the front hall, perched on the top shelf of a bookcase. Without asking for permission, she drags a chair across the room to use as a stepping stool and hops up on the seat cushion.

"Is this yours?" she asks, flashing the device in his direction and ignoring his protestations about her muddy boots on his furniture. 

"Technically no, but --"

She cuts him off before he has a chance to finish. "Good. Won't mind me doing this, then." It doesn't take long for her to dig a sheet of metal discs out of her pocket, sticking one to the back of the device before replacing it on the shelf.

"Scrambles the signal," she explains as she jumps off the chair. "Keeps people from listening in. Got any others?" 

He doesn't answer, staring at the chair that she had defiled with an unmistakable mixture of confusion and rage. The first emotion doesn't worry her, but the second does.

After an awkward moment of silence, she turns to follow his gaze. "Sorry about that. Necessary evil, short legs, didn't see a ladder -- it's a whole thing. I'll pay to get it cleaned. Are there people who come round and clean chairs?" It may be a ridiculous question, but it's spoken in earnest, bright eyes appealing to his unnervingly steady stare. 

She may share his salary, but she uses it differently. Rather than waste away in a mansion, she keeps a small place with a single spare bedroom where people who don't fear her can stay if the need arises. It's a relatively small subset. Most people cross to the other side of the street when they see her coming, and would never, ever comprehend how a person could be foolish and desperate enough to spend the night in her home. The joke's on them; she's rather nice. Or at least, as nice as she can be, given the trauma that had molded her. Nice enough to not be the sort of person to know whether or not chair-cleaning is a hirable service. 

It takes a few seconds for him to process her words and find his own. "I see why you don't get invited places." 

The insult rolls off her back with ease. As far as she is aware, Koschei has never thought highly of her. She spent weeks of her life trying to impress him while she prepared for the Games, and he chose to despise her; it makes no difference to her whether or not she bungles impressions now. "I just kept you from being spied on, which most people'd see as a favor. You're welcome. Unless, of course, you're the sort of person private enough to need a really squeaky gate as an alarm, but not so private that you don't mind your conversations being recorded." 

She's getting nervous. It makes her tongue a bit faster and her gestures a bit twitchier. The longer she remains in his territory, the less control she has over the interaction, and she cannot even begin to guess what news might be so important that he is willing to break fifteen years of stubborn near-silence to speak with her. Surely it can't be anything good; directives never are. Good directives would imply responsible people in positions of power, and responsible people don't randomly select children to fight to the death in the fragile name of peace and entertainment. 

Tense silence overstays its welcome and begins to fester, and she starts to speak again, just to fill it with  _ something, anything _ . "I --"

"Stop!" 

The command roars from Koschei's lungs, and Theta takes a quick step backwards, adrenaline flaring. She may not particularly good in fights these days, but she's very, very good at running away from them. 

Her gaze remains fixed on him, muscles tense and ready to dodge should he dive at her, but he doesn't move. Instead, he appears to collects himself, bottling up that rage and frustration until he can almost pass as a normal member of society.  _ Almost _ . There's still a glint of instability lurking behind the façade, and that glint is enough to keep her pulse racing. 

Seconds tick by, and they do nothing but stare at each other and breathe. Two victors -- two murderers -- desperately seeking to anticipate the other's next move. 

For the first time, Theta understands why Koschei rarely speaks to her even though it's been fifteen years since she had lived and his friend had died. They carry their damage too differently. 

She lets him decide when the silence should end.

Koschei unbuttons his suit coat slowly before shrugging it off, taking three strides forward and draping it over the back of the offending chair. All the while, he holds her gaze. She's not sure whether or not it's intended as a challenge, but she treats it as one, refusing to allow her own stare to waver even as he comes perilously close to breaching her personal space. The last time she had felt his breath on her face, there had been alcohol, obscenities, and rude accusations upon it, and a hundred witnesses had recorded their own accounts. This time, he is dangerously quiet, and they are completely alone. 

Eventually, the man's face softens ever so slightly and he takes two calculated steps backwards. "Should we sit?"

A couple measured breaths buy her enough time to wrestle her panic into a coherent thought. "I don't know; it's your house. You tell me." Even as she speaks, her words seem to withdraw from the room. Her previous buzzing energy fades away, folding in on itself until there’s a wall of fear and resolve standing between them. She is locking down, refusing to allow him to gather any further ammunition that might be weaponized against her. 

Brown eyes flicker between her features, unable to settle on a single part of her face. “Come on,” he sighs, stepping past her and leading the way into the kitchen. 

Like the front of the house, the kitchen feels daunting. It is far too big a space for one person, and far too dark to bring anyone joy. The faintest hint of sunlight slips from between a slight break in the shutters, illuminating the room well enough to see, but far from thoroughly. Idly, she trails her hand across the surface of a mahogany table, feeling the expensive smoothness of the varnish beneath the pads of her fingers. What good is it, she wonders, to live a life of luxury if you’ve closed off the rest of the world? 

“Do you drink tea?” he asks as he turns, opening a cabinet to peer at a shelf of meticulously stacked boxes. 

The question catches her off guard. “Not usually.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” It’s not true, but she has no intention of allowing him the opportunity to poison her. 

Koschei turns, eyeing her with a raised eyebrow and no small degree of skepticism. On the opposite side of the room, Theta pulls out a chair and sinks into it, stubbornly holding her ground. Propping her elbows on the table, she rests her chin on the back her crossed hands.    
  
“Do you want anything else?” 

“The directive.”

A heavy sigh wafts through the air between them as he abandons his foraging in the cabinets and pulls up his own seat. He leans back, away from her, as he pulls a small box from the pocket of his trousers. Almost effortlessly, he slides it across the surface of the table towards her. It bumps into her arms and comes to a decisive stop.    
  
Theta’s green eyes narrow as they flit between the box and its courier. “Is this a trap?” 

“In the traditional sense, no. In the figurative sense…” He trails off as his gaze turns skyward. 

Dread creeps beneath her skin. Over the years, she has heard countless tales of prominent people being forced to commit suicide when their presences become inconvenient to the men in power. She has lurked at the funerals of some of them, desperately seeking out inauthenticity among the faces of those in attendance and keeping a list of officials who would stop at nothing to keep the status quo in order. She would not be surprised to find her own death packaged away -- two pills propped atop an elegantly penned threat. After all, she has made no secret of her displeasure with the current state of affairs.    
  
“Explain,” she insists, fixing her gaze back on Koschei, demanding answers before she confronts whatever might be inside.    
  
He speaks with great effort, eyes moving back and forth across the ceiling as he recalls the message that had been relayed to him that very morning, voice mockingly airy. “It has been decided that you are not permitted re-entry into the Capitol unless you are  _ leashed _ , nor has it gone entirely unnoticed that I have failed to settle into civilian life in the manner as would be expected by someone in my position.” Distaste drips from his every syllable as he continues, “Thus, it has been decided that it would be best to kill both birds with one stone, or face the appropriate consequences.”    
  
Her nose wrinkles. 

Koschei moves his stare to the offending box as he drops the affect and slips back into his own speech. “I don’t care what you do in private, but I have no interest in dying because you’re too proud to keep your mouth  _ shut _ .” 

An annoyed scoff tickles Theta's throat as she leans back in her chair, irreverently scooping up the offending box on her way. She flicks the hinged lid open with a single thumb, staring down at the glittering engagement ring inside. Hatred and resentment threaten to boil over at the sight of it. They must have known that she had thrown their little list of instructions into the fire and escalated as they saw fit. She’ll make a point of sweeping her home for bugs later.

A tense pause stretches between them before she finally manages to lend her voice an appropriately scathing remark.

“Well, that’s a bit low of them, isn’t it?”

Koschei does not bother with an answer. He simply stands and leaves the room, slamming the door behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

The ring threatens to burn a hole in her pocket. 

Theta is conscious of its presence with every step. It knocks against her leg with the consistency of a heartbeat, reminding her over and over again of the choice that she has to make. Most people would not hesitate to sacrifice their freedom in return for the preservation of two lives, but Theta is not most people, and the government knows that. They have been watching her. They noticed that she regularly bets her own safety on both reckless displays of insubordination and the defense of innocents. They did the math and realized that she values freedom above everything else, and they used that understanding to design an impossible choice. If she accepts the arrangement, she loses her freedom. If she doesn’t, then she condemns them both to death. 

She knows what she has to do; she just doesn’t want to do it. 

Given a few days left alone, she could probably think of a way around it, but she doesn’t have a few days. She doesn’t even have a few hours. Once the reaping happens, the pageantry of the Games sets off at a breakneck pace. She and Koschei will be in the Capitol by morning, and moreover, they will be on the train in less than an hour, forced to sell a lie to Romana and her staff and the two tributes who likely will not live to see the journey home. 

With a sigh of frustration and anger, Theta stoops. Shaking fingers pluck a stray rock from the crumbling asphalt and hurls it at the nearest building. It collides with the unforgiving cement with a nearly inaudible click before dropping back to the ground. It doesn’t make her feel better. If anything, it makes her feel worse. All of her life, she’s been a pebble, throwing herself against a steel wall over and over again expecting to make a difference. She is an idiot, a fool, a  _ naive idealist _ . 

Still enraged, she picks up another rock. This time, she throws it a bit farther. It bounces off the window of her own house before hitting the hood of a car parked outside.    
  
_ Oops _ .

The door of the car opens, and the driver emerges, looking around for the source of the noise. Theta’s heart sinks. Time is slipping away faster than she had thought. She knows his face, the silver of his hair, the lines that betray the long life of a man who has seen both great happiness and enormous sorrow. Graham has driven her to the train station on an annual basis since the year that she had been selected as tribute, and though they never see each other outside of that context, she would consider him to be a friend. At the very least, he treats her with kindness, and in a world where she is often feared and ignored, a bit of kindness is an enormously valuable thing.

A guilty smile creeps across Theta’s face as she draws nearer, and she shoves her hands in her pockets. Her skin brushes up against the cool metal of the engagement ring, and she turns it over between the calloused pads of her thumb and forefinger. From this second onward, she is being observed. The time for indecision has passed, and she can’t bring herself to commit another murder. 

Within the hidden confines of the pocket, Theta slides the ring onto the correct finger. 

When she speaks, she desperately tries to project an enthusiasm that she does not feel. “Sorry. Bit off-schedule, me. Had to swing by a friend’s place.”

“Evening, Doc,” Graham says as he turns towards her, face stretching into an easy grin. She admires that ease. The ease of being nobody. The ease of lurking in the shadows. The ease of being unobserved. 

At the sound of the nickname, Theta wrinkles her nose. “Don’t call me that.” 

“How can I not? Not everyday you get a passenger in your car who’s just been made tribute, but is still blubbering on about how they’re going to be a doctor someday. You were so set on helping people. You even said that you thought you could balance out the cost of the Games if you saved a few lives after. Kept running through anything that gave you a bit of hope, meanwhile, that other poor boy was barely holding it together. It’s no wonder you walked out of there when no one else could. I believed you, too. Believed you’d go on to make a difference.” Fondness swells beneath his words, an emotion that sits firmly at odds with her own memories of that day.    
  
During her Reaping, she was terrified. They called her name and she almost fainted. She stumbled on her way up the stairs and didn’t speak when the representative from the Capitol asked for her age and wanted to know whether or not she was excited at the prospect of representing her District in the Games. After that initial period of embarrassment, peacekeepers herded her into a room designed for family members and friends to say their goodbyes and offer up a few last words of support, but no one stopped by to see her. Theta had lost her parents to an accident when she was eight, and all but raised herself from that point forward. The room had forced her to come to terms with the fact that there was no one who would mourn her if she died, and by the time she had been thrown into the backseat of a strange car, she was balanced on the precipice of a nervous breakdown. She had talked to keep herself sane, had announced each and every item that popped into her mind as if it was the most important thing in the world.    
  
Though she does her best to keep the pain from her face, her lips tighten into a grimace.“Yeah, well, I didn’t become a doctor, so …”    
  
Her protestations are not enough to shake his stubborn optimism. 

“You still could, you know,” he says, reaching out a hand and resting it upon her shoulder. It’s an overly familiar gesture, something better kept between friends and family than victors and drivers that see each other a handful of times a year. 

Theta flinches and takes her hand out of her pocket just long enough to brush him away. The stone of the ring glints blue in the gathering light of the sunset. “The world doesn’t work that way,” she replies, tone heavy with a sense of grief shared only by those who have carried death upon their shoulders. “The world tells us who we’re going to be, and it told me that I was either going to die or be crowned a victor, and whoop-de-doo, here I am.”

A sudden thought occurs to her as she turns her eyes away from Graham, squinting up at her house. “I haven’t packed,” she says frantically, the bitter taste of panic spreading across her tongue. She should have done that days ago, but she had stared at the mountain of laundry in her room and resolved that it could be done later. Even if she had not been pulled aside by Koschei, she still would not have had enough time to get it done properly before the train left, but she might have at least managed to throw a few things into a trunk.

“Oh, Romana swung by and said that she had it handled. Said something about Koschei telling her you were going to be late. First I’ve heard of him knowing what you were up to -- never really seemed like the sort of bloke you’d confide in -- but who am I to judge? After all, I’m over here thinking you’re still the little girl you were back when we first met.” His shoulders lift in a slight shrug before he steps backward, circling around the car to open the passenger side door. “Shall we be off, then?”   
  
Concern knits Theta’s brow together as she continues to stare at the unassuming exterior of her home. For a moment, she debates telling Graham the truth -- flashing the ring on her finger and finding some way to laugh at the quiet absurdity of the entire situation -- but she knows that she can’t. Sparks catch quickly on dry ground, and District 3 is a tinderbox. If just one person hears the truth, it won’t be long before everyone knows it, and then she’ll have a target on her back for spawning distrust in the government. It would make the whole arrangement null and void faster than you could blink, and she would be right back where she started: condemning both herself and Koschei to an untimely end.    
  
A lengthy pause stretches between them before she becomes entirely conscious of it. “Yeah, I think that’d be a good idea. Gotta be on time to something today, right? Should've seen me on the way to the Reaping earlier. I was sprinting. I could've been a champion runner if they still did those sorts of things.”    
  
  


\-----------

  
  


On the train, Theta sequesters herself in an unclaimed sleeping car.

She sits back against the pillows, draws her legs to her chest, rests her chin on her knees, and embraces the prospect of spending some time alone after the existential horror of the day. She still hasn’t met this year’s tributes, hasn’t bothered to glance at their faces or learn their names. At some point, she knows that Romana will swing by and demand that she appear at dinner, but until then, she sees no need to burden herself with staring two doomed children in the face and offering them the fragile illusion of hope and guidance. The truth is, she is of no help to them. After she won, they changed the rules, removed the tools that allowed her to manufacture death in the manner that she did. She dug up wires, exploited loopholes, and the Game Master failed to catch onto her plan until it was too late to stop her. Neither of these children will be allowed to do what she did, and they will be better for it. Losing the Games is often a kinder fate than winning them.

A knock splits the silence, and she looks up, confusion sketched across the faint lines on her face. It feels too early for the usual dinner call, but she can’t think of any other reason why someone would bother her.    
  
The knock sounds again, more insistent this time.

“We need to talk,” Koschei says, voice muffled by the door.

With a sigh of irritation, Theta reaches for the remote on the bedside table. She clicks the appropriate button before setting the device aside and returning to her previous position. The door slides open. She supposes she could have stood up and opened it personally, but she lacks both the kindness and the energy to treat him like a peer, nonetheless the other half of a manufactured couple. 

Koschei enters with his hands tightly clasped behind his back, and the doors close behind him. She’s made herself so small amongst the grandeur of the room that it takes him a moment to find her, and she can see indecision set upon his gaze as he takes a couple of slow steps forward. He doesn’t ask if she’s okay, but she doesn’t expect him to. He had always been a person too wrapped up in his own self-interest to worry about the needs of the people around him. After a moment of hesitation, he sits at the foot of her bed, keeping a significant barrier between them. She is profoundly grateful for that space.    
  
“We need to get our stories straight before dinner,” he says. He meets her eyes for a fleeting heartbeat before he turns his head away, fixing his eyes on the digital tableau of a forest spread across one wall.    
  
“I assumed you’d just talk and I’d be expected to keep my mouth shut and nod whenever you pause for breath,” Theta grumbles, pulling her legs closer to her body and hiding most of her face behind her crossed arms. Sheltering and protecting one’s internal organs in the face of a threat is a primal instinct, and it does her very little good in the face of modern innovation. No one needs to resort to physical intimidation to buy her cooperation, she already agreed to participate when she slid the cursed ring onto her hand. 

His face remains inscrutable. “It’s better if you contribute.”

“ _ Why? _ ” The question is needlessly aggressive, and it echoes off the walls.

“Because,” he says, badly hidden irritation rising beneath his words, “I am intimately acquainted with each and every one of your many thorns, but not with the person underneath them. We live in the public eye. Our relationship is consumable entertainment. We can’t sell them a marriage of convenience. We have to tell them it was love, and they have to believe it.”

A laugh of disbelief leaves Theta’s throat, muffled by her crossed arms. She hates this -- utterly despises every single implication of it. For years, she’s squirreled away her true self, hid it beneath the impenetrable armor of impulsive action and ceaseless, meaningless jabber, and she can’t believe that she is being asked to case all of that aside for a man who pitted himself against her from the very day that they had met. “You don’t know me, and neither do any of them. Maybe I’m just thorns, from the top of my head all the way down to my feet. The porcupine of District 3. Better start  _ effusing _ about how shiny my spikes are.”

She can practically feel Koschei’s anger crackling in the air between them, but he contains it better than she does. “I’m doing what I have to do to keep us alive. Isn’t that what you wanted? You hate me for abandoning you in the Arena? Fine. Fair. I did that. That’s over. Let me save you this time, then we’re even.” The words trip over themselves and bump up against each other, frantic and full of anger.    
  
“No, I hate you because you’re selfish. You’re not trying to save me, you’re trying to save yourself. You’re mad that they looked at me and decided that you ought to be my keeper, yeah? Mad that they tied you to a sinking ship and you’re just trying to scramble onto a lifeboat before it’s too late. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Look out for your own interest? I’ve never heard you speak out against the Games. Never seen you advocate for more food or tell the braindead people in the Capitol that people in our District are  _ starving _ . Fifteen years and you’ve never once raised a finger to change anything aside from your own status. Maybe it’s karmic, this. Maybe someone noticed that you’re a spineless rat holed up in a little mansion and decided to punish you for that.” 

The silence burns. It lasts for minutes, heartbeats marking each and every second. 

Theta can see the sweat collecting on Koschei’s brow, reflecting the light of the display, and she relishes in it. She had suffered at his hands, it feels only fair that he suffers at hers. Fifteen years and she finally has the opportunity to take her revenge. She isn’t going to kill him -- she can’t stomach facing the responsibility of taking another life -- but she has no intentions of opening up. Not to him, not to anyone. 

Koschei speaks first. “Have you ever been in love?”   
  
“What?” She glances up in surprise, face finally leaving the comforting shelter of her body.    
  
“Have. You ever. Been. In love.” He speaks slowly and pointedly, making sure that his meaning can’t be misunderstood or misconstrued. 

She takes a moment to consider the question, thinking about whether or not he might be able to weaponize it against her. Eventually, she answers, “Once.”

“How long ago?”

“A long time.”   
  
“Before or after the Games?”   
  
“Which one?”   
  
A light scoff floats by his lips. “You know which one.”   


“Before. Not exactly in demand, my company. No one wants to sit and have drinks with somebody who did what I did, except for the denizens of the Capitol, and they barely see us as people.” Green eyes turn towards the ceiling as she reconsiders the statement. “Well, aside from you, maybe. You play the part well enough that they probably count you as one of their own. Probably got a whole load of people lined up to brush shoulders with ‘the Master.’”

He ignores her attempt to invert the conversation. “When you were in love, did you fantasize about the proposal?”   
  
A bark of laughter leaves her lungs. “No.”

There’s another long pause as he stares at her, head cocked with skepticism. 

She meets him with a fleeting stare of her own and then shrugs, eyes once again roaming aimlessly around the room. “I thought maybe one day I would propose to her. Her house had a fireplace, and I would go over there whenever the nights got cold and I couldn’t afford to keep myself warm. She’d sit with me and we’d laugh and talk about things that didn’t matter, and on those nights, it felt like I wasn’t alone. I would’ve asked in front of that fire.”

Theta is immediately conscious of his eyes on her, and she buries her head into the crook of her arm. There’s tears in the corners of her eyes, and she can’t bear the thought of him seeing them.    
  
He hesitates before saying, “People will ask how I proposed to you. I need to tell them something you would have said yes to.”

“You can steal mine. I never told her about it. Never even told her I loved her.” Guilt and regret squeeze her chest so tightly that she feels as though she might never be able to breathe again. Rose may not have been one of the deaths that she had directly caused, but she feels responsible for it all the same. There should have been something that she could have done to stop it. Something she could have said, a hand she could have grabbed, but it’s far too late for that. Maybe if Rose had survived, then she wouldn’t be in the position of feigning engagement to a man whom she despises. 

“One more question, and I’ll leave you alone until dinner. Do you want me to sleep here, or do you want to sleep in my room?”   
  
“What?” Her head snaps back up, eyes narrowing. She had been so wrapped in the memory of her own grief that she barely heard the question, only catching every third word or so.    
  
Koschei repeats the question, hand vaguely gesturing in a manner that is profoundly unhelpful but keeps his frustration with her largely out of his voice. “Are we sleeping in this room or mine? You can sleep on the floor if you want to. I don’t care, but I don’t want anyone on this train to start spreading rumors about how the engaged victors from District 3 still sleep in separate rooms.”   
  
She inhales through her nose before saying, “This one’s fine. You can sleep on the floor.”   
  
He raises an eyebrow. “That wasn’t one of the choices.”   
  
“I don’t care. I share my heartbreak; you sleep on the floor. Seems only fair.” Lips tighten into a thin line as she stares him down, making it absolutely clear that she has no intention of budging on the issue.

Koschei stands, adjusting the cufflinks on his jacket as he says, “When you go to dinner, remember that we’re being observed.” There’s a quick pause, before he adds a cursory, “Please.” 

She doesn’t confirm that she heard him, nor does she watch as he walks out and the door closes behind him. 


	4. Chapter 4

Theta manages to squeeze in a nap before dinner. 

As brief as it is, sleep allows her overwhelmed mind a bit of time to sort through the day and eases some of the anxiety that had claimed her muscles in its vice grip. She awakes feeling refreshed, and possesses enough newfound common sense to drag a comb through her unkempt hair and change into a clean set of clothes. She chooses a comfortable sweater and a pair of trousers that almost fit. The outfit is nothing fancy, especially by Capitol standards, but it shoves her halfway down the road to appearing decently presentable. Truthfully, it's as close as she's willing to get to  _ pretty _ on her own, but she'd like to enjoy the comfort of choice while she still can, before Romana inevitably rips it from her hands when they near the Capitol. 

She enters the dining car in a swirl of energy that seeks to distract from the ring on her finger and the disgust that tugs at her top lip. "A nap did me a world of good. Useful thing, a good nap. Always recommend taking one when you can. Even in the arena, provided you find yourself a decent tree or cave or some other hideaway. Sleep keeps your mind sharp." 

A hush settles over the room as four sets of eyes turn towards her. For the first time in half an age, she is early enough that no one has bothered to take a set at the table yet. Romana sits between the two tributes on a sofa against a wall, facing a screen that has been pointedly paused on the climatic brawl of the previous year's Games. Koschei, on the other hand, lurks in a far corner, arms crossed over his chest and a single foot propped up against the wall. He shifts ever so slightly as she meets his gaze, brushing a thumb over his bottom lip as he gives her a pointed once over. 

Theta turns away from him with a quiet sigh, and catches Romana peering quizzically at the ring, which she promptly hides behind her back. The two tributes, too, are quiet, unsure what to make of the newcomer. 

"Why's everyone looking at me like I've got five heads?" she snaps after the silence has stretched a moment too long to be comfortable. "Last I checked, I've only got the one."

The male tribute speaks first. "My mother told me you were mad." 

Hands still clasped behind her back, Theta takes a step closer, eyeing the boy through slightly narrowed eyes. He's a bit short for his age, but muscled and wiry, like a runner. His blonde hair is slightly tousled, and gray eyes speak of a fear that he's desperately trying to hide beneath a mask of faux confidence. He reminds her of herself, a bit. Not a dead-ringer, by any means, but close enough for a vague sense of recognition to prickle beneath her skin. 

"What's your name?" she asks. 

"Sparrow," he supplies proudly, as if he had somehow won the name by stripping it from a previous owner. 

Her volume drops, anger shimmering beneath her words and shadowing her gaze."Well, Sparrow, you'd best start getting used to madness, because you're going to see nothing but madness from here on out. I'm mad, Koschei's mad, even Miss Romanadvoratrelundar is a little bit mad, even if she's too proper to say so. Madness is your best hope of making it out of that Arena alive, because you have to lose every single last shred of your pride and your dignity to strike down a sea of other children who are just as hungry and desperate and cold as you are. Any questions?" 

The ghost of a low chuckle floats across the room from the direction of Koschei's chosen post, whilst Romana can summon little more than an expression of stunned affront. 

The corners of Theta's lips lift into a smug smile as she crosses to the other side of the couch, holding out a hand in greeting to the other tribute. "Hi. Sorry about that. Got a bit carried away. I'm Theta."

A small, brown hand finds its way into her own, offering the tiniest of shakes. "Rennette." 

Practically drowning beneath a sheet of dark bangs, Rennette is much younger than her male counterpart. Judging by first glance, Theta wouldn't guess that she's any older than eleven. Bad luck to get pulled in one's first year of eligibility. Tributes that young rarely win, but when the Rennette finally meets her eyes, Theta can see a quiet fire burning in their depths. Smart, this one. This girl has been thrown into an unfamiliar situation and is actively choosing to sit back, observe, and learn instead of desperately trying to assert faux dominance. Theta can name a hundred adults who would never be able to summon that amount of composure in the face of danger, herself included.

"Very nice to meet you, Rennette. We're going to get on well, I can tell." 

Though Theta isn’t entirely sure whether or not that sentiment will hold true, she likes to think that it will. In a world that has become increasingly hopeless, she would like to be able to cling to something, even if that thing is a tiny child who will face no better than 24:1 odds of victory in the betting rooms. Maybe this will be the year that one of her tributes will finally make it out alive. Maybe the world will be so distracted by that newfound phenomenon that she and Koschei will be cast aside and forgotten. It is a foolish dream built upon impossible odds, but she has always maintained that it is far better to be a hopeful fool than a miserable genius. 

“Don’t believe her.” 

Very suddenly and without warning, a hand presses gently into the small of her back, accompanied by a that voice hovers somewhere near her ear. She had not heard Koschei cross the room, and she cannot help but jump at the unexpected contact. For a second, she is tempted to turn around and give him a piece of her mind, but the weight of the ring on her finger reminds her that the lashing will have to wait until they are alone. 

She feels his fingers tense against her back as he braces against her flinch, but his voice carries on as though nothing had happened. “As a general rule, Theta doesn’t take well to people.” 

The end of the sentence lifts like a joke, but no one laughs. This is hardly the audience for ‘playful jabs.’ Two terrified tributes stare in on in awkward confusion, the gears of Romana’s mind are practically visible as she leans forward, eyes fixed on the point of contact between the two victors, lips slightly parted, and Theta can focus on nothing but the heat of his touch and frantic beating of her heart. She has been so isolated from people for the last decade and a half that she doesn’t know what is expected of her, doesn’t know what her half of this interaction is supposed to look like, doesn’t know how to do her part to sell this lie. They had not gotten far enough in either of their conversations to breach the subject, nonetheless devise a tangible plan. The uncertainty of it all leaves her quiet, awkward, and completely consumed by the overwhelming fear of exposure.

When no one speaks, Koschei fills the gap with a command framed in the guise of a question. “Shall we dine? We’re all here, the table is laid, so there doesn’t seem to be much point in delaying.”

“Yes, I think that would be wise,” Romana agrees, rising to her feel with no small degree of dignified aplomb. “Certain subjects are better breached on full stomachs.”

Romana seats herself at the head of the table, taking up a position in which she might be able to keep a steady eye on both the victors and the tributes. For now, Sparrow and Rennette stick close by each other, something that will no doubt change as the Games themselves become imminent, and they realize that in the Arena, there are no friends, not even those who come from the same District. Their naïve camaraderie leaves Theta and Koschei to their own half of the table. Theta lays claim to the chair furthest from Romana’s prying eyes, and Koschei, without question or protestation, sweeps into the space between them. 

As if on cue, a stream of Avox enter through the doors on either end of the car, setting platters and drinks on the table before wordlessly taking their exit. Theta is the only one who thanks them, casting aside the Capitol custom of ignoring their presence and their service. Every single one of the Avox had been like her once, dissidents striving to make a tiny difference in a cruel and uncaring world, and so far as she sees it, if she hadn’t been drawn for the Games, she could very well have found herself among the ranks of these punished traitors. 

Almost as soon as hands touch serving spoons, Romana ventures a question, “Exactly how long have the two of you been seeing each other?”

A utensil slips from Theta’s fingers, clattering against her plate. Immediately, she busies herself with righting the situation, keeping her eyes low and ignoring the persistent stares of her table mates. 

Koschei, ever the diplomatic manipulator, takes the question in stride. “It is difficult to put a timestamp on it. These things happen gradually, as you know, especially with a history as long-standing as our own. For a very long time, our interest was merely professional, and then it morphed into something new beneath our very noses.”

Theta finishes serving out and spears a single carrot with her fork before she bothers to contribute a snide aside of her own. “Establishing a media-fueled feud by humiliating someone at a party makes for a long and awkward reconciliation, especially when there is no public apology. The kind of oversight makes the whole thing entirely unexpected, doesn't it? Completely skipped over a necessary bridge in the narrative by keeping it to ourselves. Little wonder we're victors and not journalists.”

A small degree of irritation evades Koschei’s meticulous control as his tongue hisses against the top of his teeth. “Did I never apologize for that? I’ll have to rectify that once we reach the Capitol. No doubt I’ll be given ample opportunity to do so.  _ Everyone will be looking to speak to us _ .” He lingers on the final thought, casting a sideways glance in her direction. It is a pointed, but ultimately unnecessary reminder, that they exist upon the stage.

Romana saves Theta from replying. “You two have always struck me as an oddly combative pair, but a good friend of mine once said that dueling partners make the best romantic matches. You two simply must face off for us at some point in the next few days, I insist. After all, the entire training facility is at our disposal. We could make a whole party of it. Can you imagine the spectacle? Victors turned lovers facing off within the safety of a controlled environment? People would rave about it for  _ weeks _ . Imagine the sponsorship deals that would roll in for the tributes, simply because the elite want to see more of you.”

Theta wrinkles her nose and stabs a potato with unusual vigor. "I try not to touch weapons these days. Dangerous things. Never know when you might kill someone by accident." 

An unwelcome memory slips into the front of her mind. There had been a moment, crouched by a sickly green lake with a pile of wires in her hand, when she felt the certainty of her own victory snap into place. In that second, glee and relief flooded through her veins, chasing away the vestiges of her lingering terror. That sense of power was intoxicating, and the moment in which she committed unthinkable evil carried a high that she could have easily spent the rest of her life chasing if decency and shame and the haunting echoes of the dying had not dragged her back and replaced glory with  _ revulsion _ . She can still smell that moment sometimes. It smells like death and burning and horror.    
  
Theta is very, very afraid that the moment she picks up a weapon again, she will once again be too enamored with her own darkness to keep herself grounded. She is not fit to wield that kind of power.

She is vaguely aware of conversation carrying on somewhere slightly outside of the bounds of her perception, but she feels as though she has been plunged underwater. Words and phrases slip past her, vaguely acknowledged, but completely unheard. It takes Koschei’s hand on her knee to bring her back into the present moment, with no knowledge of what had exchanged in the meantime or how long she had been detached from their current reality. She is so shaken by it that it does not even occur to her to move her leg and free herself from the presumptive contact. 

Koschei turns his face towards her, wine glass perched between the fingers of his opposite hand as he eases her back into the discussion, "Come now, Theta, I heard you were quite a hand with a dagger during training, even if you never got a chance to show off those skills in the Games themselves. It would be an absolute delight to test my skills against yours." 

Her own shaking hand guides a water glass towards her mouth, attempting to combat the sudden dryness of her throat. “I had never used one before. The closest I had ever gotten to combat was soldering microchips on the factory floor. Hardly a comparable skill.”   
  
“Instinct versus skill, even better.” Content that she has fully returned, Koschei removes the invading hand and returns his focus to his own food. 

"At the very least, we'd have a laugh, and goodness knows we are sorely in need of such things,” Romana says airily. “Do let me know if you come around to the idea, Theta.”   
  
Silence falls over the table.

The memory of burning flesh lingers in Theta’s nose.

She stares down at her plate. Her appetite fled as soon as her mind turned towards memories of violence, and she doubts that she will be able to find it again. It’s a shame; she hates seeing food go to waste. Starvation is omnipresent in District 3, and she has heard whispers that it plagues other districts as well. The people of the Capitol enjoy a greater abundance than they could ever need, but so little of it gets distributed elsewhere that it manufactures faux shortages. Starvation is a useful tool for preventing uprisings, especially when paired with ritualized the kidnapping and murder of children.

Wooziness sweeps over her and she inhales sharply through her nose, pushing her chair back from the table with a deafening screech of metal against hardwood. “I need to go. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

Her head swims as she races back to her own car, moving as quickly as her feet can carry her, and she barely makes it to the toilet before vomit and bile rise in the back of her throat. There’s a click as the door opens again behind her, and familiar fingers brush her hair back from the sides of her face, patiently waiting for her sickness to pass. 

Theta braces her palms against the seat, arms shaking with effort and fatigue. “I didn’t ask you to come,” she says, eyes fixed stubbornly downward as another wave of illness wracks her body.   
  
Koschei waits until she’s done retching to answer. “I’m not going to stay behind and look like a monster. That wouldn’t do either of us any good, especially since Romana is already suspicious.” 

With a sigh, Theta grabs a tissue, wiping her face and sinking down to sit on the cool tile of the floor. After a moment of indecisive hesitation, Koschei joins her, crossing his legs and bracing his elbows against the inside of his knees. Their wary gazes meet in the space between. 

“Smart girl, Romana,” Theta says, a hint of fondness curling her lips and clouding her eyes. “Too smart to be doing what she’s doing, but we’re all trapped in systems that we can’t escape.” 

If Theta could help it, she would have disappeared from the Games circuit altogether years ago, but District 3 has only two victors, and she is locked into servitude as a mentor until another winner emerges, and -- reaching even further beyond that -- she and Koschei are now bound to each other for the foreseeable future. Lingering grudges or otherwise, they are stuck sharing this lie together. 

“Do you hate this as much as I hate this?” she asks, weary gaze idly flitting back to Koschei. 

“The Games or the engagement?” Curiosity quirks his brow upward. 

“All of it.”

Thoughtfulness settles over him. It takes a long time for him to answer, and when he finally does, his words are spoken in a manner so guarded that they hardly seem like the truth. “I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know when I do.” 

He stands, brushing imaginary dirt from his jacket before extending a hand to her. “Come on. I’ll leave you alone, but I’m not going to let you languish on the bathroom floor.” 

Theta stares at it for the space of two breaths before she begrudgingly accepts his help. “Don’t let me fall.”

He pulls her to her feet, and holds on just long enough to make sure that she is not going to faint. Once he is absolutely sure that she’s steady, he returns his hands to his pockets and takes a careful step backwards, expression veiled. “I won’t.” 


	5. Chapter 5

There are stars in her hair. 

They peek out between blonde waves, glittering gold and silver whenever they catch the light, and collect upon Theta’s shoulders in elegantly worked metal epaulettes that almost look like armor. The fabric of the suit situated beneath shifts between soft grey and a shade of blue as deep as the night sky itself. Stardust shimmers in the corners of her eyes and at the highest points of her cheekbones. Capitol fashion has never truly suited her, but she does not hate this. It is not entirely comfortable, but she feels at home in this in a way that she never could in a bubbling skirt or sculpted neon wig. 

Normally, no one would bother styling her for the first arrival, but the ring on her finger has rewritten the game. From the very moment that the news breaks, she and Koschei will be swept away by a tide of questions and media requests, and there is a decent chance that they will not see the familiar apartment until the inhumane hour when night becomes morning. The prospect fills her with unshakeable dread that sinks into her bones. She had pretended to be asleep when Koschei had wandered into the room the previous night to avoid conversation, and they had been kidnapped by separate members of Romana’s staff almost immediately upon waking. It means that they still have yet to devise a coherent story, which forges this day into a trial by fire. In all fairness, however, Theta is unsure whether or not planning would have helped their situation. Even at the best of times, she is far from cooperative, and this is most certainly  _ not _ the best of times. She is grieving her life and her freedom, and that pain has left her shaken and angry and prone to lashing out. No doubt the poor woman who had done her hair is relieved to have escaped with all of her digits intact. 

Theta is the first member of the District 3 contingency to trickle into the dining car’s sitting room, and she claims a spot on the very couch that Romana and the two tributes had occupied the day before. She swings her feet onto the cushion to take up space and settles in to wait, resting her clasped hands on the hollow of her ribcage. 

It is not long before the blissful silence is interrupted. 

Koschei is a sunset slipping through gathered storm clouds. Red and orange threads strike through charcoal greys, warm and cold at the same time. Coattails sweep as he moves and streaks of gold glint in his hair. They make an intimidating pair -- gods of war and open sky. She would imagine that that was the intention, and she cannot help but wonder how long he had clung onto the directive before choosing to share it with her. This degree of pageantry requires no small amount of planning. The idea that she could have known days or weeks ago nags at her mind and floods her vision with the crimson flush of renewed rage. 

His inscrutable gaze lingers on the constellation in her hair as he says, “They managed to wrestle you into something decent, didn’t they?”

A scowl tugs at her mouth and deepens the line in the center of her forehead. When she speaks, her words straddle a knife's edge. “No need to act so surprised. You’ve seen me do press before. Loads of times. I’m practically an expert.” Of course, her victory tour had been somewhat abbreviated due to the peculiar manner in which she had won her Games and the unrest that had followed, but she had suffered through enough Capitol parties over the years that followed that that ought to count for something. 

He lifts a single finger to buy her silence and offers up a pointed correction. “I’ve seen you  _ fight _ with the press before.”

Theta scrunches her nose, upper lip curling away from her teeth in disgust and annoyance. “Yeah, _well_ , I never claimed to be perfect. Don't try to tell me you've never gone off at them. I'm sure you have."

Koschei's hands find his face, and an exasperated sigh slips through his fingers. After a weighty pause, he asks a slow and deliberate question. "Have you ever watched the Games coverage before? Any of it? Really, truly watched it?" It is an answer that he would know if they had bothered to speak with each other during previous Games, but they often found themselves deliberately stranded on opposite ends of betting rooms and viewing parties. 

" _ Nope _ , and I don't plan to start now if that's what you're asking." 

At the parties, she keeps her eyes down when she can, pulling strangers into loud and lively conversations to drown out the buzz of ongoing horror. If something happens to her tributes, she hears it through gasps and whispers and deals with it accordingly, whether that means soliciting a quick sponsorship or resigning herself to the privacy of her rooms in order to mourn a life taken too early. She never counts the cannons, and she never,  _ ever _ looks directly at the screen. 

His hands fall. One finds his pocket while the other idly circles at his side, gathering thoughts. "Tell me, Theta, were you born this big of an idiot or did it take effort?" The words bite and simmer in the charged air.

Theta swings her feet off the sofa and stands, closing the distance between them in three easy strides. With the slight heel of her shoes, they're on exactly the same plane. Eyes meet eyes and rage meets rage as a proud grin spreads across her face, "It takes effort."

They’re too close. Closer than they had been when he had held her hair back, closer than when he had grabbed her wrist, closer than when he had roared his anger at her and compromised her space. The snap of peppermint washes over her tongue as if she has stolen it from his very mouth. She can see each and every bead of sweat collect and glisten on his skin, count tiny muscles as they tense and contract in his forehead, see the almost imperceptible wavering of his upper lip. Fear demands that she retreat, but today is not the day for fear. Today is a day for anger and resentment, and  _ oh _ , is she angry. 

It may be unwise to toy with a man who had bought his title and reputation through cold-blooded mass murder, but she’s a murderer, too. She may not have dragged a knife across anyone’s throat or bathed in their blood, but she had flipped a single switch and condemned almost an entire field of tributes before she had even had a chance to suffer the effects of exposure. She can’t lean on dehydration or starvation for excuse or justification. She can only blame the cruel system that had thrown her into the Arena and the mentor who had made it abundantly clear that she was on her own, and both of them have come back to haunt her. Yesterday, that had been shocking, but that shock has passed, sharpening the pain from the festering wounds that have lingered for years. 

“I could kill you, you know,” Koschei says, voice perilously quiet. 

The ghost of a laugh spills from her lungs. “Kill me and you die, too, and tell me I’m wrong, but I don’t think you’re particularly interested in that.” 

Flirting with death is for people with nothing left to lose. It’s for people who dreamed of being doctors and found themselves becoming murderers instead. It’s for people who have had love ripped from their grasp. It’s for people who wake up every day and choose to yell at people over state dinners and start combative debates at elite social gatherings. It’s for people who get thrown into a death match and cheat to win. Koschei is none of those things. Theta is all of them. 

The pounding of her own heartbeat fills her ears as he leans a tiny bit closer. The space between them is infinitesimal, electric, fragile. For a moment, she wonders what it would feel like to break it. It would be so easy to brush her lips against his. Effortless, even. It would mean nothing, it would  _ be _ nothing, but perhaps it would make her feel the tiniest bit alive. 

They stand and swap breaths, frozen in mutual indecision until they are interrupted by the whoosh of a compartment door and Romana’s lofty voice. "Good morning, you two." 

It cuts through their shared anger, shattering the moment. 

Koschei steps back with a smile summoned with such forceful immediacy that it rings hollow. Theta watches him closely as he turns away from her. For just a second, his mask slips, and that tiny mistake fills her with a sudden and unexplainable desire to rip it away entirely to see what lies beneath. No doubt his vulnerability demands a high price, but she’s already bargained away her freedom. It would not be so difficult to sacrifice whatever little she has left, especially if it means gaining leverage in a marriage that she neither wanted nor asked for. 

There are words being exchanged somewhere else, but Theta doubts that they involve her, and she doesn’t listen. She focuses only on the slow braking of the train, the hiss of her breath between her teeth, and the suddenness with which the light filtering through the windows shifts and reconstitutes as they finally arrive in the Capitol. In the space of an instant, the world itself is rendered glaringly artificial, even while the certainty of an unkind reality crashes down upon her shoulders. 

Once the train comes to a complete stop, the contingency is held on board for an uncomfortably long time. So long, in fact, that Theta begins to run through possible explanations out loud, each one worse and more glaringly ridiculous than the last. Both of the children squirm in obvious discomfort, occasionally looking towards Romana for help. Romana offers them nothing but a slight shrug and a promise that they should be released soon. Koschei stands slightly apart from the rest of them, leaning against the wall and casting periodic furtive glances in Theta’s direction. She pretends like she doesn’t notice. 

Theta makes it all the way to suggesting the unlikely possibility of a violent raccoon uprising before a harried assistant of some sort stumbles through the door, offering up apologies and offering up a vague timeline for the rest of the day. The information goes in one ear and out the other. Though Rennette and Sparrow will follow the same route that tributes have always always followed, she and Koschei both know that their particular schedules are subject to immediate change. 

In the interim, Romana busies herself by arranging them for the cameras, taking them all by the shoulders and guiding them into an arrangement that suits her need for coherent and professional order. The tributes are placed in front, Romana takes up sole position in the middle where she can shove them along as necessary, and Koschei and Theta bring up the rear. They stand in this arrangement patiently and silently, waiting for the doors to open and reveal the cameras and excited crowds upon the platform. 

Without warning, Koschei takes Theta’s hand in his, interlacing their fingers. She flinches at the contact, but doesn’t pull away. She lets her wrath rise and flow through her, embracing its warmth. It is exciting to feel something other than dead, endless fear. It does not improve her circumstances, but it keeps her grounded to the some semblance of sanity. 

He leans over and swipes her hair back with his opposite hand. Lips hover a couple inches away from her ear as he whispers, “You ready?” To anyone else, it might sound like genuine concern, a question spoken out of a vague desire to check in on his partner’s emotional and mental health. Theta, however, can feel the pointed selfishness that lurks beneath the surface. He’s not asking if she’s ready; he’s making sure that she isn’t going to ruin this for both of them. 

Theta looks over at him as the doors finally open and excited shouting falls about their ears. She is painfully aware of the fingers that linger in her hair, spread amongst the stars.    
  
A smug, false smile lifts the corners of her lips.

“Yes.”

It’s a lie, but it’s a lie that gives her power.    
  
In lieu of freedom, power is all she has, no matter how much she may fear its toxic sway.


	6. Chapter 6

Noise crashes over Theta in a meaningless wave. 

The force of the impact threatens to overwhelm her. It is only spite and Koschei’s anchoring hand in hers that keep her grounded. It isn’t that she doesn’t like crowds, in fact, she often thrives in them. People are endlessly fascinating, and in the right place and under the right circumstances, she can flit from conversation to conversation listening to small stories of personal triumph. However, those circumstances primarily revolve around the packed factory floors in her District, not the strange landscape of the Capitol. 

The Capitol has never been driven by genuine human connection. It is a veneer of glitz and glamor slapped atop a bloodthirsty monster. Every year, tributes are marched in from outlying Districts. They are distracted from the immediacy of their deaths with the temptations of luxury, and then, without exception, they are devoured alive. Even the victors are ripped limb from limb until they are little more than reanimated corpses spouting whatever nonsense they have been trained to believe. Of course, there are exceptions. Some victors remain a semblance of their former liveliness. Many of the Careers --  _ and Koschei _ \-- slip into their new roles with ease, and on the other end of the spectrum, Theta will pick a fight with something as simple as a lamppost if it seems like it might be willingly participating in an unjust system. 

Theta and Koschei step off the train together, and their feet barely touch the pavement of the platform before the crowd’s focus tangibly shifts. Cheers for the tributes and the elbowed bustling to get a first good look at them turns into a murmured hush of confusion. Cameras pan, and Theta is all too conscious of the dozens of eyes on her. She doesn’t like the feeling of being judged. It is one thing to wear a ring with the knowledge that she was given little choice in the matter, and quite another to face the reality that thousands of people will rush to draw assumptions and fill in the gaps for themselves. The idea of being cast as a lovesick fool doesn’t appeal to her. Other types of foolery lie more in line with her brand. 

Her mind is already buzzing, brainstorming excuses and explanations for her own behavior that feel even vaguely passable. 

None of them are any good. She can’t seem to stop thinking about raccoons.

“Theta.” Koschei’s voice cuts through the cacophony as he tugs Theta to a stop. 

She turns, eyes wide and worried and searching for threats, only to find herself face-to-face with a flash of a badge. Like most things in the Capitol, the credentials are entirely digital, and the pixels shift so quickly that she barely has time to process the logo before it is stowed away again. Ignoring the cameras still pointed in her direction, she shifts her weight from one foot to the other, eyes rolling skyward as an exasperated huff whispers between her lips. Barely five minutes, and they have already been pulled aside, and by Flickerman’s crew no less. At least it buys her a bit of time to breathe. He’ll want to wait for one of the scheduled broadcasts; he almost always does. Better viewing numbers that way. 

The woman in possession of the badge exchanges a couple quick words with Koschei, not spoken loudly enough for Theta to hear. She knows she has a reputation for picking fights with members of the press without warning, but it deeply annoys her that she would be deliberately ignored while standing  _ right there _ . 

Theta takes a step forward, impulses overriding her better sense. “Worried about those raccoons, are we?” she says, looking pointedly between Koschei and the stranger with her eyebrows raised. “Caught wind of that. Nasty business.” She doesn’t care about the content of her words, it is simply the act of speaking that’s important, the act of asserting her presence even while she’s being purposefully excluded. Of course, her lack of care does little in the way of defending her position as a sane member of society, but exercising foresight has never been one of her priorities. 

She can feel Koschei’s irritation as his grip tightens around her hand, constricting muscles and tendons and blood flow, but he succeeds in keeping it out of his voice and out of his face as he turns his attention towards her. “First interview rights. They sent a car.” 

“Thank you, Koschei,” she says coolly, casting an almost venomous side-eye in the direction of the other woman. They hold eye contact for an uncomfortably aggressive moment before the stranger finally turns and ushers them forward through a break in the crowd. The pair of victors follow behind, hands still linked. 

Overstimulated by the noise and enthusiasm, Theta shrinks away from the press of people on either side of the makeshift walkway, accidentally bumping shoulders with Koschei. “Sorry.” The apology comes quickly, and she floats just enough to her left that they are no longer at risk of collision. 

He simply sighs, eyes remaining fixed on the figure in front of them. “You can’t keep doing that.”

“I said I was sorry.” 

“I mean the raccoons. You can’t keep talking about raccoons.” 

“You’re right. It’s unfair. I’ll switch to squirrels. No one ever suspects a squirrel.”

Silence falls between them once again, and his grip on her hand loosens ever so slightly. Theta doesn’t know whether or not that means that she’s won this little exchange, or if there was even a prize up for grabs aside from disrupting the delicate power structure that Koschei has been fighting to establish since the very moment that they first met. He has always felt the need to overpower her, but she won’t allow herself to be squashed. Not by his comments, not by her fear, and most certainly not by the forced arrangement that has pulled them together. She agreed to sacrifice her freedom, not her personality. 

They squeeze three across in the backseat of a car, and Koschei is either worried or decent enough to let her have the window seat. She doesn’t much care which emotion is the motivator. They accomplish the same thing. 

It’s incredibly close quarters. Hips press against hips and legs press against legs and she keeps her eyes turned towards the window for want of distraction.Though they were not in view of the cameras for long, their faces are already plastered across screens and projections throughout the city, his fingers laced in her hair and their gazes locked. She cannot bear to look upon any of them directly, but she keeps catching reflections in plate glass windows and flashes in the corners of her vision as the car works its way through the gridded streets. Embarrassment and anger bring a flush to her face, and she bites the inside of her cheek to keep from saying anything rash while they remain in mixed company.

Eventually, after a lengthy drive and a bit of a walk, they are deposited in a dressing room in the enormous theater in which Caesar Flickerman conducts his broadcasts, and their escort leaves them alone. 

Koschei immediately drapes himself across a velvet armchair, confidently and easily claiming space in a place that he has frequented throughout the years. Theta, however, can't seem to stop moving. Her mind is racing, her heart is racing, and it feels only right that her feet should be racing, too. Unfortunately, she has only limited space in which to do so, which leaves her frantically pacing in front of the longest wall. 

She expects her partner to speak up and berate her for her behavior, but he says nothing. His steady gaze merely follows her path back and forth time and time again, lazy amusement flickering at the corners of his mouth. Silence is not the countermove that she had expected from him in this little game, and it makes her uneasy. 

Her shoe squeaks against the hardwood floor as she pivots for the hundredth time and a question explodes from her lungs, "Why do they care? I mean, honestly, the world is falling apart out there, but one ring and one touch and suddenly that's the most important thing in the world?"

Koschei’s eyes continue to track her as his mouth crafts a careful reply, "It's the most important thing in the world to us. Why shouldn't it be the most important thing in the world to them?"

"Unlike you, Koschei, I don't think I'm the center of the universe."

"Don't you? People don't start uprisings at state dinners because they want to go unnoticed. You don't show up late and disheveled to public appearances because you aren't making a statement. You assert yourself in any room you enter, and don't pretend like you don't do it on purpose.” A shrug lifts his shoulders. “Plus you keep blabbering on about vermin. Not exactly lying low, are you?”

Wrath flashes. Before Theta can stop herself, she’s across the room. Her closed fists press into the arms of the chair as she leans over him. She inhales sharply as she stares him down, nostrils filled with sweat and cologne and the unmistakable sharpness of mint. “Don’t pretend like you know  _ anything _ about me.”

He meets her gaze, wholly unconcerned. This is his territory, after all. He’s comfortable in this space in a way that she will never be. “Oh please, Theta. I understand you better than anyone else ever could. We come from the same home, you and I. We’ve taken almost the same number of lives. I watched you rage from the very moment that your name was drawn. And no matter how many times you hide behind rodent uprisings and petty fights, you can’t help yourself from plastering your heart on your sleeve.” 

She deflects, nose wrinkling. “Raccoons aren’t rodents.”

“Not the point, and you know that.” 

Theta watches, eyes narrowed in suspicion, as Koschei carefully detangles one of his arms from amongst her invading limbs, propping his elbow on the back of the chair and thoughtfully bracing his chin against the knuckles of his pointer finger. 

“Now, if you’re not going to stab me or kiss me, love, do you mind giving me a bit of space?” He practically purrs the pet name.

Begrudgingly, Theta straightens and takes a few careful steps backwards. Her wary gaze lingers on his for a long moment as she desperately attempts to take his measure, however, she’s met only with carefully maintained armor and casual disregard. With a huff of frustration, she returns to her pacing. 

She doesn’t know how she is supposed to survive this. She feels as though she’s struggling against a shadow. Whereas he does not hesitate to piece together flashes of insight into her character and fashion them into a coherent whole close enough to the truth that it cows her into submission, he has exercised too much self-control to allow her the same privilege. There are brief moments of simmering anger, the cutting remarks, the lingering stares, but none of it is tangible enough to allow her to forge a weapon strong enough that she might strike back at the true self that lurks somewhere beneath his persona. It makes every exchange feel enormously unbalanced. 

She only manages to complete two lengths of the room before her wrath hijacks her body again and she stops dead in her tracks, wheeling around to face him. “What do you get from this? I mean, really? You have to be as angry about everything as I am, so why are you just sitting there?” Her hands gesture almost wildly, frantically trying to organize her thoughts and make sense of the situation that she has found herself in.    
  
His chin lifts in interest, hovering slightly above his hand. “When I walked into the Arena all those years ago, I decided that I was willing to do whatever it took to survive. This is no different.” The faintest hint of a smile traipses across his face. “And I figure that if you keep running about and throwing yourself into walls, you’ll eventually tire yourself out enough to see reason, and I’ll stop wanting to strangle you.”

“I haven’t cared about my life in fifteen years.” There it is again: brutal honesty slipping past her better instincts and worming its way into the open. Though she has revealed that truth over and over again through increasingly reckless actions, she has never spoken it aloud. No one has dared to get close enough to be trusted with her deepest thoughts, and even though she does not care for Koschei, she trusts him to keep her secrets. After all, she holds his life in her hands. Pretty decent, insofar as leverage goes.

It’s his turn to close the space between them. 

He rises and marks the room in easy strides before stopping a step away from her, his hands in his pockets and his eyes blazing with quiet fire. “Twenty-three people died, and you lived because you were smarter than they were.”   
  
“Twenty-three children died because I  _ cheated _ .”

“Eighteen children died because you,  _ also a child _ , exploited a loophole that no one bothered to close off. The other five are someone else’s problem. What a waste of time if you don’t bother living the life that they would have lived if any of them thought to do what you did.”

“Where was this support fifteen years ago?” Teeth flash, almost feral. For a moment, she sees the fleeting ghost of the comfort that she was denied in the wake of her Games. She had no friends, no family, no help to speak of. She faced her demons alone, abandoned by the one person who was supposed to guide her, and here he is, speaking the very words she had needed to hear a decade and a half too late for them to matter. 

“I could ignore you fifteen years ago. For better or for worse, I can’t anymore, and it’s in both of our best interests if you hold yourself together.” His voice wavers slightly. There have been very few instances in the past twenty-four hours in which Theta hasn't felt openly deceived, and she clings to this nugget of truth with desperate intensity. It's not much, but at least it's _something._

The door to the room cracks open, and moving almost simultaneously, the pair whips their heads towards the interruption.    
  
An headset-wearing assistant pokes her face around the corner, offering up a cheery, “Five minutes,” before closing it behind her again. 

Koschei waits for the sound of footsteps to retreat down the hallway before he turns his attention back to Theta. “Use that,” he says, gesturing vaguely in her direction.    
  
“I’m sorry?” The skin of her forehead wrinkles, each line representing an unspoken question. She’s normally a bit quicker in conversation, but both her sudden vulnerability and the unexpected interruption have thrown her off her stride.

“Your pain. The abandonment. Use it when we’re out there. Build a narrative around it. This is, what, your first interview in years? They’re going to be far more interested in you than they are in me.” There’s a quick pause, before he tacks on a quick, “And Theta?”

“What?” she snaps the question, tongue stiff with nervous energy. Without waiting for his answer, she turns away and begins moving towards the door. As much as she is dreading this, she would very much like it to be over. What she wouldn’t give to be hiding away in the comfort of the familiar third floor apartment that they occupy every year, focused so completely on the tributes and their struggles that she might be able to forget her own predicament entirely. 

“If you so much as  _ mention _ raccoons, I will make this very, very uncomfortable for you.” 

It’s no empty threat.    


“I told you, I’m on squirrels now,” she comments briskly before stepping through the door and into the hallway, abandoning their privacy and the conversation that it had fostered. 


	7. Chapter 7

Even from the wings, the lights are blinding. 

It has been years since Theta last stood in this place. During her last media appearance, she exchanged a series of charged accusations with Caesar that ended in a brief broadcast blackout for ‘technical difficulties,’ and a letter signed by the President summarily informed her that she is no longer permitted to engage in spoken public appearances. That ruling has, of course, been cast aside in light of the recent news, however, a producer informed her that she is required to wait out of sight until Koschei fetches her. She isn’t entirely sure what that setup intends to accomplish. If she wishes to stir up trouble, she is just as capable of doing it in Koschei’s presence than she is outside of it, but instead of arguing the point, she simply nodded her agreement and took up position leaning sideways against a backdrop. She has no intention of being escorted from the building before they even allow her to take the stage.

Nerves flutter in her chest as she works the fingernails of her right hand into the palm of her left, leaving a scattering of angry red divots. She knows that she should be workshopping her lies into something vaguely believable, but she can’t seem to focus long enough to make any progress. The pressure is too high, the stakes too great, and she is floundering beneath the weight of it all. Were Koschei here, he would likely say something scathing enough to be distracting, but they were separated almost as soon as they reached the stage doors, and no one bothered to tell her where or why. 

Should one of them make it out alive, she will be sure to warn her tributes against repeating her mistakes. If one is to be rebellious, it is, probably better to do so with enough wieldable intent and focus to invoke actual change. She has never successfully managed either, and as such, the media has been profoundly unforgiving. 

Theta’s eyes turn skyward as familiar theme music swells to fill the space, and an as yet unseen audience roars their enthusiastic approval. It sounds bigger than Caesar’s usual noon audience, and she wonders how many denizens of the Capitol dropped everything as soon as the footage of District 3’s arrival hit their screens. She is unsurprised by the demand. Koschei has always been a particularly popular topic of conversation within certain spheres of giggling girls and bright-eyed young women. Romantics always clamor to be present at both moments of great hope and moments of great heartbreak.

A disembodied voice adds its tone to the noise, declaring, “And now your host, Caesar Flickerman!” 

Theta turns, looking around to see if there are any screens plastered in this corner, but they seem to have stowed her away in the one place in the building where it is impossible to view the show. She wonders if they did that to her on purpose. 

Caesar Flickerman’s voice -- bright, energetic and unmistakable -- cuts the applause short. “Welcome, welcome.” Theta can practically hear the smile that underlies every word, shaped and enhanced by repeat surgeries. The state relies on broadcasters to entertain and reassure the masses that everything is as it should be, and Caesar is better at it than most. He has held this position as long as most people can remember, yet he hardly seems to have aged a day. Once, at one of her earliest parties, she leaned in too close to him, squinting as she searched for signs of aging. She did not find any, and she wonders if she would be any more successful if she looked tonight. 

“As you might have heard, we have a special announcement today,” he continues, a hint of organized mischief creeping into his tone. The crowd meets his energy in kind, buzzing in interest. “I know! Exciting, isn’t it? Reaping Day yesterday, breaking news today. If I’m not mistaken, it’s an omen for a very exciting Games to come.”   
  
The crowd roars its unquestioning approval. 

“But we’re not here to discuss this year’s Games. Ladies and Gentlemen, you know him as the Master; I’d like to welcome to the stage one of our favorite friends, victor of the 53rd annual Hunger Games, Koschei Oakdown!”

Theta has never heard a crowd be quite so energetic. Voices crack and grow hoarse. Hands clap with such unbridled enthusiasm that she is certain that they must be red and inflamed. A wolf whistle or two breaks through the drone of noise. 

She has never understood Koschei’s popularity. He may turn the charm on when it suits him, but that does not change the fact that every year, the populus is treated to a dozen replays of his lengthy string of murders throughout his Games, each one committed with the cruelly serrated blade of a dagger. Each and every one of his kills was bloody and violent. Not as creative as her own takedowns, mind, but just as difficult to watch. Surely some people in this cursed city retain some semblance of a moral compass. 

Koschei waits for the excitement to die down before he speaks. “It is always a pleasure to be here, Caesar.” The words are smooth, practiced, evenly measured. Though everyone else in attendance can easily mistake it for genuine friendliness, Theta is all too familiar with his little tricks. It is the same tone that he uses on her when he wants information. 

“Koschei, I honestly can’t remember the last time we got the privilege of speaking with you this early in the Games,” Caesar says. Theta can hear the anticipation seeping through his words, eager to bypass the formalities and dig into the heart of the news that brought them here. She doesn’t blame him. She, too, is antsy. 

“Oh, you know how it is,” Koschei replies, characteristically unfazed. “It always takes a couple days to settle in. Our tributes have never seen a place like the Capitol before, and as a mentor, it is my job to help them get accustomed to their new environment. Depending on the ages of the tributes, some years are more difficult than others.”   
  
A scoff escapes Theta’s throat, unacknowledged and unheard in her lonely corner. Though the statement is unlikely to be a jab made at her expense, she cannot help but view it in the context of their shared history. No matter what guidance Koschei might have offered other tributes throughout the years, he will always be the boy who abandoned her. 

“Of course, of course,” the host says in agreement. “But you’re not here to discuss your tributes, are you?”

“It would hardly be fair of me to do that when they have hardly had the chance to introduce themselves, now would it?” Koschei’s words curl in droll amusement. 

In want of some other way to occupy her time, Theta runs a hand along the corrugated metal that backs the screen. These televisions are manufactured in her district day in and day out, and she knows every step of the process. If she was so inclined, she could disable the device in a matter of seconds, but now is not the time for such a strong disruption. Maybe another day, when the world has turned its attention elsewhere and there are less eyes on her.

“Now,” Caesar pauses for dramatic effect, drawing breath before soldiering onward. “I have been told that you brought a guest along with you tonight, and I think I speak for all of us here when I say that we are very interested in meeting her. What do we say?” he asks, appealing to his audience, “Do we want to meet Koschei’s guest?” 

The enthusiastic response brings bile to the back of her throat, and its bitterness sinks into her tongue.

“Sounds like a yes to me! Why don’t you go grab her for us, Koschei? We’ll wait. We love a bit of suspense on this show.”

“If you insist, Caesar.”

“I do, indeed. Don’t we?”

The crowd roars again.

A few leisurely steps carry Koschei into Theta’s hiding spot. His brown eyes are bright with an excitement that she could never muster, and he wordlessly extends his hand to her. Behind him somewhere, the crowd murmurs in the wake of his disappearance. The sound makes her hesitate for a brief seconds, but he offers her a tight nod, and she places her hand in his. 

A wall of sound meets them as they emerge from behind the backdrop of layered screens. Lights shift from white to red to blue and then back again, momentarily disorienting her enough that she fears that the Earth has moved beneath her. She blinks a few times, eyes jumping from one point to the next, fighting to establish a sense of place and distance. 

She slows slightly, feeling her hand press into his, dragging him backwards like an anchor. To her great surprise, Koschei pauses for a moment to draw the back of her hand to his lips in an exaggerated expression of affection. The audience eats it up with manic joy. She does not share the sentiment, but she is enormously grateful that he has bought her time, and the memory of the touch lingers on her skin long after it ends. She doesn’t like the way her body seems to cling to him even while her mind openly rejects his presence. 

Eventually, her head stops spinning. Her eyes finally settle upon Caesar Flickerman’s face, and the unnaturally tight skin spread across it. His hair is so elaborately coiffed that it seems to defy gravity, and dyed a brighter pink than it has any right to be. She sees his smile waver as their stares meet, but he corrects it almost immediately, turning his back to her and throwing a wide gesture in her direction. “My, my,  _ my _ , the elusive Theta Lungbarrow, everyone! What a  _ treat _ !” He doesn’t bother to grace her with her title, a fact that does not pass unnoticed. 

A heartbeat too late, she remembers to force a smile. 

Koschei guides her to her seat and she sinks into it without waiting for an invitation. The suddenness of the motion throws the two men slightly off their rhythm, but they settle into their own chairs shortly thereafter, and Koschei finally pulls his hand from hers. Despite the release, she is still acutely aware of the boundaries and expectations keeping her in line. As Koschei so kindly told her, this arrangement is designed to keep her  _ leashed _ for the comfort and convenience of those in power. At times, social engineering can be even more powerful than its mechanical counterpart. Theta greatly resents that effectiveness. 

Awkward silence settles over them for a passing moment. Caesar takes his time uncrossing and recrossing his legs before he takes the initiative to break it. “An image of the two of you arriving in the Capitol this morning seems to have caused quite a storm. Can someone pull that up for us?” 

Expensive fabric slides and shifts as the two men turn to face the screens behind them. Theta trains her gaze on empty air. She doesn’t need to see it. The wash of charcoals and oranges and blues that trespass in her periphery is more than enough. Should they manage to survive this initial onslaught, she will probably have to learn how to come to terms with the images that frame her new existence, but she hasn’t had time to grapple with the current state of her reality. It has been twenty-four hours since he first broke the news to her. They were twenty-four of the longest hours of her life, but twenty-four hours all the same. It is hardly enough time to process anything, nonetheless anticipate each and every change that they will face in their day-to-day lives. 

“Now,” Caesar says, turning back in the direction of his guests. “I think I speak for everyone in Panem when I say that  _ none _ of us saw this coming. Tell me, Koschei, how did you manage to keep this a secret?”

Theta’s eyes roam towards her partner, evaluating the steadiness of his gaze and the slight flicker of emotion that pulls at the corners of his mouth. His groundedness is a distraction from her own unsteadiness. It keeps her mind in the moment, even while a hundred little noises and shifting lights threaten to drag it elsewhere. 

“Love sometimes comes from unexpected places,” Koschei comments. He leans back in his chair, crossed hands braced upon his knee. “I must admit, it took me a terribly long time to realize the truth of what I was feeling, and given that much of Theta’s time is spent outside of the limelight, it seemed only natural that things would progress in private.” A smug smile situates itself across his lips as he adds, “And I must admit, I felt a bit selfish. I give so much of myself to all of you, that I wanted to keep something of my own.” 

Her brows contract slightly, but she does her best to chase the anger from her face. The idea of ownership, even when spun in metaphor and sleight of hand, is fundamentally abhorrent. As imaginative as her mind is, she can think of very few concepts that she is  _ less _ willing to entertain. 

“Is there a ring yet?” Caesar leans in closer, genuine interest sketched upon his face. 

“Yes, there is.” For the first time since the broadcast started, Theta finds her voice. It’s husky and slightly hoarse, but it feels good to contribute to the conversation. The illusion of progress is better than no progress at all. 

She leans forward, aware of Koschei’s wary gaze as it cuts into the back of her skull. With almost uncharacteristic lightness, she holds her hand out towards Caesar, inviting him to take it. Despite the misgivings that have thus far permeated their interactions, he does. The blue sparkle of the gems reflects back at her in his eyes, dancing and glimmering as he turns her hand first one way and then another, both for his own benefit and the benefit of the lurking cameras. 

“Well, ladies, I think it’s safe to say that our darling Master is officially off the market.” A couple quiet cries of disappointment lift above the crowd, and he raises his hands to quiet the noise. “No, no, no, this is a time for celebration! As much as we all wish we could be in her shoes right now, we do so  _ adore _ a good love story around here.” 

He releases Theta’s hand, and she leans back again, fingers nervously toying with one of the many stars that dot her hair. 

“Now tell me, you two, a courtship between two legends. It must be a tale for the ages, that one. Would one of you care to share it with us?” His eyes flick expectantly between them, waiting to see which one takes the lead.    
  
Theta glances over at Koschei, and he nods. A sigh raises and lowers her shoulders as she steadies herself. She doesn’t have a plan. Doesn’t even have the start of a plan. Doesn’t so much as have the first word. Just as she did in the Games, she will have to let instinct drive her. At least she is decently good at talking.    
  
“I suppose I’ll start then.” Her tongue sweeps across her lips. “I’ve never been the easiest person to get close to. A bit squirrely, me.” She lingers on the descriptor just long enough to annoy Koschei, but she doesn’t dare glance sideways to view his reaction. “Always running, always nervous. Always restless. Most people don’t have the patience to deal with it, and I don’t blame them, really. Koschei didn’t even put up with it those first few years we were working together. I could count on one hand the number of times he stayed in a room alone with me for longer than five minutes. It’d only take one finger.”   
  
A wave of laughter rolls across the audience. It offers her the semblance of a safety net, and she relaxes ever so slightly. This must be what it feels like to be Koschei, she realizes. A thousand people sit at her beck and call, she holds them all in the palm of her hand, and with a single word, she can mold and control their reactions, and he’s good at it, to boot. She hasn’t felt this powerful since …   
  
She swallows the thought. She can’t allow her mind to go there. Not now. 

She braces herself with a laugh and a grin -- breathy, charming, almost sincere -- before continuing on. “I suppose at some point, I wanted to see more of him. An attractive and fascinating person who experienced the same things that I experienced. I wanted him to understand me. I …” Teeth tug against her bottom lip as she allows the truth of her emotions to sink into the falsehoods of their story. “I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I bothered him when I could. Not hard. Easy to needle, this one.”   
  
A bark of laughter echoes beside her, and it startles her enough that she finally looks over at her counterpart. He’s laughing with his hand cupped over his mouth. 

Her nose scrunches slightly, unsure what part of the story he’s found so amusing, and it takes a prodding monosyllabic question from Caesar Flickerman to get her back on track. “ -- And?” 

She rips her gaze away from Koschei, turning it back towards the host. “And both our walls wore down eventually. I don’t know when we fell in love -- it was fast and slow and confusing all at the same time -- but it must have happened at some point. Maybe here. Maybe at home. Doesn’t matter, really. Just matters that we did.”   
  
A fawning chorus of awws floats towards her, and she averts her eyes. If this story was true, she doubts that she would find this degree of shame and embarrassment in it, but to a degree, her story is built on shattered dreams and unspoken wishes, and those are deeply vulnerable. She feels dangerously exposed, and exposure brings the familiar heat of anger back to a boil in her veins. 

Caesar does not allow the silence to last long. “What about the engagement? There must be a story there.”   
  
Theta’s eyes remain fixed on the floor. 

Koschei’s shifts somewhere at the corner of her vision, hand falling away from his face as he moves to adjust his sunset-colored jacket. “I can tell it.” 

Gratitude blossoms in her chest, so warm and unexpected that for a brief moment, she almost mistakes it for genuine affection. However, she shoves the thought aside before it can take root. Koschei is a murderer, a lone wolf, a mass manipulator, and she wants no part of it. There is nothing there worth loving, nothing worth clinging to, nothing worth celebrating. She would be a fool to fall for the mask that he wears. No matter how kind it may seem when it suits him. 

She braces herself for the story that she had given him that night on the train, the tale of homes and fireplaces and lost love, but he doesn’t use it. 

“We were sitting on the roof of my home, watching the sunset and the stars emerge for the first time after days upon days of endless rain. I had been carrying the ring for weeks, and I looked at her, lit by starlight, and I knew. I was so certain, in fact, that I forgot to ask, I just slipped it onto her finger without a word.” 

Laughter swells again, and it is enough to convince Theta to look up. Her green gaze finds his face as he speaks, flitting from eyes to lips. His own eyes are fixed upon her hand and the glittering ring upon it. “I suppose she must not have minded, because she kept it, and I still don’t think I’ve bothered to ask the question.”

Her head turns, darting towards Caesar’s excitement and then fixing back on Koschei. Adrenaline rises as she realizes what he’s doing, and her heart beats so quickly and so loudly that for a brief moment, she swears that she must have two pulses. She stands without realizing what she’s doing, even while he slides from his chair and kneels, taking both of her hands in his.    
  
“Theta, will you do me the honor of marrying me?”

_ Oh _ , if she had a knife in her hand, she would have struck him down then and there. Her rage is so absolute that it threatens to consume her. It holds thought and language out of her grasp, and for a painfully long minute, she can only breathe and stare and simmer. Those who look on, however, only see genuine awe, because that’s what they choose to see. It is, after all, the familiar narrative, and it is easy to project it onto these two people that they have always seen but barely know. 

Language comes back first. She doesn’t need thought. Needing thought would mean first having choice, and choice was snatched from her hands hours ago. 

“Yes. Did we not cover this? I thought you already knew.”

The crowd and Caesar drown out all other awareness. Koschei beams up at her with feigned pride, and she counts down the seconds until she is allowed to be free of both this place and the people within it. 

For the first time, she is eager for the Games to start. As terrible as they are, they are at least familiar, and she can do with a bit of familiarity. Without some sort of a rock to hang onto, the rising tide is going to sweep her away, and Theta is not entirely sure if she is built for swimming. 


	8. Chapter 8

Theta disappears as soon as they reach the apartments. 

She had initially hoped that they would arrive a bit later, and thus be saved from private conversation by the presence of Romana and the two tributes, however, she is not so lucky. For the tributes, the first day back is a whirlwind of waxing and haircuts and fittings and a hundred other unpleasant things that should not accompany a fight to the death but do anyway. In the first or second running of the Hunger Games, someone realized that it was easier to earn sponsors if your tributes were beautiful little ideals of youth, and the rest of the field latched on to that fact so voraciously that stylings are no longer negotiable. Personally, Theta had hated that part of the process almost as much as the Games themselves, but she also acknowledges that some people value the distraction. This year, she has a hunch that the District 3 tributes will be split down the middle on the issue.

In lieu of the comfort of mandatory company, she ducks into a side stairwell as soon as Koschei turns her back on her in the hallway. For a moment, she stands there with baited breath, waiting to see if he has noticed and dared to follow her, but he never comes. Feet patter on the cement of the stairs as she nips down to the kitchen with a mission in mind. 

It takes only a few moments of negotiation with the staff -- and many more elated utterances of the cursed word  _ ‘Congratulations’ _ than she would ever like to hear again -- before Theta emerges with a bottle of wine clutched tightly in her hand and rides the elevator up to the penthouse. 

She knocks twice before taking a couple steps backward, rocking her weight backwards and forwards on her feet as she waits. She probably should have checked to make sure that District 12 actually arrived before sneaking up here, but there are a lot of things that she  _ probably _ should have done today. She is too far out of her depth to grapple with plans and schemes and checking basic information before taking action. 

Theta is about to turn around and head back downstairs when a young woman opens the door. 

Yasmin Khan won the Games three years prior on behalf of District 12, and due to poor design and mismanagement, did so without taking a single life in the process. The Gamemaker that year decided that it would be a brilliant idea to place the Arena on an ice-capped mountain. Most of the tributes died of exposure, and those that didn’t, fell to their deaths. The purposeful murders can be counted on a single hand, and Yaz possessed enough good sense to hunker down, find shelter, and stay out of trouble until the last cannon sounded. Predictably, the public met those Games with abject disappointment, Theta met them with absolute glee, and the Gamemaker met his early end. 

Last year, Theta made a point of seeking out Yaz as a friend, and though they are not close enough to bare their souls, they share jokes and drinks. Plus, after Yaz caught Theta doing an unsafe maneuver in order to reach the roof from the fire escape, she offered her ongoing access to a shortcut through an unlocked maintenance door in the penthouse. Normally, Theta brings a bottle of liquor in exchange. It feels only fair. 

Theta leans forward, excited grin spreading across her face. "Hey, Yaz, can I borrow your roof access?' 

They make an odd pair, standing on either side of the doorway. Theta is still clothed in the finery that Koschei foisted upon her, desperately scrambling to cling to the joy that she finds in the presence of a friend. Yaz, on the other hand, carries heavy bags under her eyes. Her dark hair is pulled into a precariously situated bun from which half of it has already escaped, and her clothes are wrinkled in a manner that suggests that she slept in them. If anything, their appearances ought to be switched. 

"Bit early to be seeing you, isn't it? Things that bleak this year?” Yaz asks, stepping back and holding the door open so that Theta might be able to pass through. 

Theta passes off the bottle of wine on her way in. "Had a bit of a day." Her upper lip curls ever so slightly at the thought of it all, and she purposely avoids discussing specifics. If Yaz doesn’t know yet, she’ll know by tomorrow. No need to try to work her way around news that she has yet to process and properly contextualize. 

"Is that why you're all done up?" 

Theta watches as Yaz casts her eyes first up and down, taking everything in from the shifting blue and grey of the suit to the stars in her hair. She can’t tell what the other woman might be thinking, or if she is indeed capable of thinking at all, given the exhaustion that clearly sits heavy on her shoulders. Theta can’t blame her -- thought has eluded her own grasp on numerous occasions today. 

"Have you not watched the news?" Theta asks after a moment’s uncertain pause. 

"I've been busy throwing together this…” the younger victor trails off, gesturing vaguely in the direction of another room, “... _ thing _ . Our rep went rogue so I had a pile of stuff thrown into my hands. Don't know what to do with half of it, so I've just been making stuff up."

"Good thing I brought the wine then. It'll help. Maybe. Don't honestly know. Lucked out with Romana. Always together, that one." She knows that she ought to mention the engagement. It is her duty as a friend to keep Yaz informed, to open up and share her life -- or, at least, the version of her life that she’s allowed to share, since Yaz will never be able to know the complete truth -- but it is far more comfortable to dodge and obfuscate than to open up.    


“Anyway,” she continues, green eyes turning skyward and roaming the vaulted ceilings, “Do you mind coming up and throwing something at me if the tributes come back before I resurface? You know me -- bad at time.” 

“You’re plenty good at time, just bad at focus.” A corner of a smile dances at the corners of Yaz’s lips as she holds the bottle of wine aloft. “Thanks for this, by the way.”

“You’re very welcome. Good luck with whatever it is that you’re doing. Hope it’s not too awful,” Theta says, casting the words over her shoulder as she moves down the hallway.    
  
“Too late for that!” 

The sentence barely reaches Theta’s ears before she opens the door with a single lean of her shoulder and begins the ascent up the short stairs that lead to the roof. Due to an incident that took place long before she was even born, no one who stays in these apartments is allowed to venture up here, but it is the only place in this city where Theta feels the smallest guarantee of safety. There are no cameras, no screens, no expectations that need to be upheld. It is just her, the blazing sun, and the faint bustle of life taking place somewhere far below her. For the first time in hours, she feels like she can breathe. Nothing is right in the world, but at least she’s in it. 

She sits, shrugging off her jacket and tossing it somewhere off to the side. The metal of the shoulder pieces clangs against the cement, and she winces slightly at the noise before settling back into the peace of the moment. Hands raise as she moves to detangle the stars from her hair, unclipping them one by one and placing them into her pockets. The sun sinks into the bare skin of her arms, newly freed from the confines of fashion, caressing the angry thunderbolt of criss-crossing electrocution scars that span the inside of her forearm. It’s the first time in a while that it’s been exposed outside of the familiar comfort of her bedroom. In the company of others, she always keeps it covered by sleeves, tucked away out of sight so that people don’t ask uncomfortable questions, but up here, she is alone, and it doesn’t matter.

Once all of the metal is out of her hair, she lies back against the ground, closes her eyes, and dozes off. 

  
  
  


The sun sits lower in the sky when the squeak of a door and a falling shadow wake her. She cracks one eye open, expecting to see Yaz, but Koschei stands over her instead. In the intervening hours since she last saw him, he has changed into all black, shirt strategically unbuttoned in a manner that is nothing short of suggestive. He scans her, eyes lingering briefly on the exposed scar.

When he speaks, his words are careful. "What are you doing?"

"Taking a nap. What does it look like I’m doing?" Theta snipes as she props herself up on her elbows, squinting up at him. Her beating heart wants nothing more than to stand up and walk away from him, but the rest of her body is still rousing itself from sleep, unwilling to commit to immediate action. “Can’t get a decent sleep in our rooms these days, can I?” 

A sigh drifts past Koschei’s lips as he turns his eyes towards the skyline spread out before them. She can see his jaw working as he fights through her statement, trying to figure out whether or not it’s worth it to return or rebuke her attacks. He does neither, and after a moment of hesitation, he sits down beside her. "I wasn’t sure where you were." 

Eyebrows raise. "That was the point. How did you find me, anyway? Thought no one else bothered to come up here."

"I talk to people."

She waits for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t, and she gives up, allowing herself to fall back against the rooftop. It feels good to brace herself against something tangible. The ground doesn’t ask anything of her in return for its support, and it doesn’t threaten to give way beneath her feet. A rare commodity, these days. Her hands rest on her stomach, palms turned downward to keep the bulk of her scar out of sight. The damage is already done, he’s already seen it, but she hopes that as a fellow victor, he knows better than to press the point. He has scars, too. She knows he does. She’s seen him broken and bleeding in a dozen half-glimpsed highlight reels. 

“I brought you this,” he says, tossing a small metal flask at her hands, and she barely manages to move quickly enough to soften the blow.

With a groan, Theta pushes herself back into a seated position, folding her tired legs beneath her as she unscrews the cap. She brings it to her nose, wrinkling her nose as she smells the unmistakable burn of alcohol. If this is intended to be an apology for his earlier behavior, it is an objectively poor one, but she expects nothing better from him. 

She casts a quick glance sideways at Koschei before she dares to drink. “Is it poisoned?” 

“No more than whiskey normally is." 

Theta takes two generous sips before passing the flask back to him. He raises a silent toast in her direction before he, too, partakes. She chooses not to acknowledge it, instead turning her eyes back towards the unforgiving brightness of the late afternoon sky. 

“I probably should’ve told you,” he says after a long pause. 

Theta doesn’t have to ask him what he’s talking about. As unwanted as the memories are, she cannot help but turn the mess of a proposal and the shame and doubt that surrounded it over and over again in her mind. Of course, she anticipated nothing but horror going into the interview, but it had somehow turned into something beyond her worst nightmares. She did so well, committed so thoroughly to the lies that she was expected to tell, and then he turned around and stabbed her in the back.    
  
The flask bumps against the side of her arm and she accepts it again. She drains the rest of its contents and rescrews the cap. “You think?” Bitterness frays the edges of her tone. 

“I thought it would be more natural if I didn’t. I was wrong.” 

It is an unusual admission, especially coming from him. The blonde’s eyes narrow as she shifts her gaze back in his direction, eyes narrowing in suspicion. The last time they drank together, he yelled at her in front of every single one of their peers. This time, she doesn’t know what to expect from him, doesn’t know whether the buzz of alcohol fosters truth or buries him deeper beneath his lies. 

“Yes. You were very wrong.”

Koschei does not reply.    
  
The sun slowly sinks deeper in the sky, and impulsively, Theta says, “You asked me questions. It’s my turn.”

His shoulders tense, and his eyes flit back to her, their brown depths unreadable. For the first time in years, she can feel his anxiety, and she latches onto it. Fear is human. Fear is universal. Fear is real. “I can’t promise you anything.”

There are a dozen questions swirling through her mind, and it takes her a minute to discard both a lingering query about raccoons and the handful of vague concepts that are too abstract for him to answer before she picks out the most important one. “How long did you know about the directive before you told me?” 

A quiet exhale dribbles from his lungs. “Two weeks.”

The world flashes red. “And you waited until  _ Reaping Day _ to tell me?” Contempt and frustration drip from the words. “You honestly thought that the best time to break the news was at a moment that gave me absolutely no time to process it before we were both thrown on a train and dragged here?”

He shrugs, refusing to meet her anger. “You’re difficult to talk to, and I knew I’d see you then. We’re not exactly friends, Theta. If I turned up at your house one day with an engagement ring and a bottle of wine on a random evening, do you honestly think that you would give me the time of day before kicking me out into the street?”

Theta staggers to her feet, and the world spins around her. She forgot just how much whiskey she imbued, and how rapidly she did so. Quicker than she can blink, Koschei is up beside her, one hand on her shoulder and the other on the bare skin of her scarred forearm, firmly guiding her away from the edge of the roof. 

“Don’t bother,” she grumbles, pushing herself out of his hold. 

His hands and arms fall away immediately, however, he strategically positions himself between her and the nearest edge. “I told you I wasn’t going to let you fall, and I didn’t just mean then.” 

“Course you didn’t. That’s your brand isn’t it?  _ ‘Look at me, I’m the Master. I say all the right things and do all the wrong ones.’ _ ” She takes a careful step closer to him, and he shifts ever so slightly to the left, keeping the direct path between her and the drop completely covered off. He is only slightly taller than she is, and she tilts her head, sizing him up. If it ever came to a physical altercation, she bets that she could take him. Not easily, but she’s fit enough, and she is willing to cross lines that she doubts that he’ll even consider. 

“What do you even want from this?” she asks after a quick pause. “Two weeks is a lot of time to build expectations. You’re five steps past where I am. You’re not in shock anymore. Tell me what you want.”

This time, he doesn’t hesitate. “I want us both to live.”

“ _ Why? _ ” She’s too close to him again. Whiskey and peppermint mix and mingle in her nose. 

“Because I value my life, and I owe you yours.” He raises a hand as though he is considering brushing her hair back from her face, but he appears to think better of it. Instead, his fingers idly tug at the lobe of his ear as he stares her down. 

“You don’t owe me anything. I lived without your help, didn’t I?”

Theta doesn’t give him a chance to answer before she turns around and pulls the maintenance door open, disappearing down the stairs. On her way through the penthouse, Yaz says something that she doesn’t hear, and she offers up a tight-lipped smile and a wave in lieu of something worthwhile. It is abundantly clear that she is not ready to connect with people. Not Yaz, not Graham the cab driver, and most certainly not Koschei Oakdown. She has too many open wounds, and each year without fail, the Hunger Games rubs salt into every single one of them. 


	9. Chapter 9

Theta runs away as fast as her feet and mind can carry her. 

She has always been better at running away from her problems than facing them head on. Avoidance doesn’t solve anything, but it makes her head hurt a bit less and keeps her heart from bursting. If she stays busy, it keeps her mind from drifting back into uncomfortable territory. She goes to bed long after Koschei and rises far earlier, spending hours chatting away with the tributes about survival skills when she catches them in spare moments, and jogging off to stick her nose in places where it doesn’t belong when they are dragged away for their final parade fittings. Koschei either respects her need for space or lacks the energy to track her down, because she doesn’t see him until lineup. 

By chance, they step into the same elevator, dressed in suits that don’t match. He is in a royal purple, she is clad in a black struck through with yellow and gold. She doesn’t look directly at him, but she can feel his eyes lingering on her. 

An eternity passes before the doors slide closed, and reasonably assured that they are alone, Koschei breaks the silence. “Are you going to run away from me forever?”

“Yes.” Theta’s answer is too quick to land, too sharp to be true. 

He turns to face forward, taking in their twisted reflections in the bronzed metal of the elevator doors. “I don’t think that is going to end well, do you?”

“I run from myself just fine, do you think I can’t do the same for you? Very good runner, me.” Her hands find her pockets as she leans back against the railing and the glass windows behind it. Most people that she has shared this elevator with have blanched at the very idea of being so close to the window and grow nauseous when they dare to look off the edge. Theta, however, figures that if the windows have lasted this long, it seems unlikely that they will give out now, and if they do, that’s just as well. Saves her the trouble of suffering through Koschei’s company. 

“Given that you were okay with almost falling off a roof yesterday, how has that been working out for you?” 

Her eyes narrow. She doesn’t appreciate how quickly he seems to pick up her thoughts and how intent he is upon discrediting them. They stand on opposite sides of a divide, and she has been intent upon defending her side of the bridge. It feels rude and unfair that he should so continuously trespass in her mind when she could not make it clearer that he is unwelcome there. She wants nothing more than to sulk and mire in her pain alone. If she wanted help, she would ask for it, to say nothing of  _ needing _ help. As far as she is concerned, no one in this world is qualified to provide counsel. None of the other victors shoulder the same burden, and she has no intention of sharing the intimate details of her pain with any of them. Some of it may be visible, yes, but that is not the same thing as willingly opening her heart to somebody else. 

“How do you stand doing what you did if a part of you doesn’t also want to die for it?” Theta asks. 

It is intended to be a jab. She doesn’t expect him to answer honestly, but he surprises her. 

“I played the part that I had to play in order to survive, and I don’t feel guilty for it. I may have carried out the execution, but I did not pass the sentence. Their blood is on my hands, but not on my conscience, and any of the others would have done the same things. If I die for my sins, there is no atonement. The wheel turns on and chaos continues and there are twenty-four people dead instead of twenty-three. There is no point in moralizing an issue that lies far beyond morality.”

His answer is too composed, too eloquent. She doesn’t agree with it, but it shakes her conviction enough that she can do nothing except stare at the ground as the elevator continues its steady drop. 

“Who mourns them if I don’t?” The question comes before she can stop it, quiet and loaded with guilt. 

Koschei steps forward, sliding the pads of his fingers beneath her chin and tilting it upwards. Blonde hair slips back from her face, baring her features as the pain in her eyes meets the pain in his. “Their families mourn them, their friends mourn them, and there are moments in which they are mourned by no one because time is meant to dull pain. It does not sharpen it. The world turns on, people are lost, there is nothing that you can do to stop it. Other things would have taken them by now if the Games had not claimed them. Illness, hunger, accidents -- we lose people. We will lose more when the Games start this week. The girl or the boy or both will die, and we will keep going. No point in stopping now.” 

Her tongue nervously wets her lips. “I can’t accept that.”

“You  _ have _ to accept that,” he snaps. “If you keep looking backward, you cannot move forward.”

“How do I stop looking backward if I’m here every year? If someone, somewhere, looked at the two of us and decided that we needed to be handcuffed together for the rest of our lives? My past is always hanging over me, and the only hope I have of escaping it is if I keep running.” Tears gather, shimmering in the corners of her eyes. She focuses somewhere past his face, ignoring the gentle, insistent pressure of his fingers on her chin and the heat of his gaze on her. 

“You either come to terms with it, or you die, and I’m not going to let you die.”

“Why not?”

The elevator doors slide open behind him, and someone coughs, “Are you two getting off?” 

Koschei does not turn around. “No. Be a darling and hit the button for us, would you? You can catch the next one.”

“But we have to --” Theta starts to work her mouth around a protest but he puts a finger over her lips. The door closes again, and the floor begins to rise beneath their feet. She probably should have expected this, should have anticipated that the very moment he managed to catch her, he wouldn’t let her run away again without saying his piece. 

“They don’t need us. What are we going to do? Tell them to look brave and put on a good face for the cameras? Romana’s already doing that; they don't need us there, too. We need to be right here, right now, sorting through whatever  _ mess _ you’re dealing with.” 

As he speaks, his voice drops closer and closer towards an angry growl, and his finger remains stubbornly pressed against her mouth. The touch is uncomfortable, it’s condescending, and in a flash of irritation, she bites him. Blood coats her tongue -- bitter and salty -- and he snatches his hands away. She steps sideways, ducking beneath his elbow until she is the one closest to the doors, muscles tense and ready to run again as soon as they open. She expects him to meet her with anger, but he merely shakes the pain from his hand and starts laughing. 

Her brows contract in obvious confusion, and her gaze flashes from his hand to his grin and back again, desperately attempting to string together some vague semblance of understanding. She comes up painfully short. He has a concerningly good grasp on her psyche, but she can never seem to trespass on his own mind. Perhaps it’s because he’s mad. Perhaps it’s because he’s guarded. Perhaps it’s simply because she is too focused on her own problems to truly concern herself with anyone else’s. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t have the emotional availability required to process it. 

He leans against the railing, sucking on the bitten finger for a moment to stop the bleeding while he collects his thoughts. “I’m not asking you to like me, Theta. I’m asking you to listen. One person in this engagement has to care about you, and ideally, that person would be you, but it’s  _ not _ , and so I’m stuck picking up the pieces. If I don’t want to be your fiancé, I most certainly don’t want to be your babysitter. I want to be able to walk out of your life for a week when I need a detox and be reasonably assured that you’re not going to throw yourself in front of a firing squad.” 

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. Your life would be so much easier if I did, and maybe, just maybe, I'd manage to save a starving family or keep a child out of the Games before I did. Not going to end up in front of a firing squad without reason, am I?"

“No!” The word bursts from him with a suddenness that backs her against the elevator doors. “No. It wouldn’t be  _ easier _ . I may not like you, Theta, but neither of those children are going to make it out of the Games alive. No one from District 3 ever does. There’s just us. I hunted down and murdered every single person I could to escape alive, and you electrocuted an entire Arena and yourself. None of the victors come from where we came from. None of them did what we did. Looking at you is infuriating, and half the time I open your mouth, I’m tempted to rip out your tongue so that I never have to hear another idiot word about raccoons, but your very existence keeps me from being alone.”

Theta doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what to think, doesn’t know what to feel. Koschei has  _ always _ been a master manipulator, and she cannot begin to sort what might be fiction from what might be truth, but there is a feral desperation in his gaze that gives her pause. She has seen the mask fall away before, has seen an anger rise from him that mirrors her own, but though he certainly is not calm, there’s something that undercuts the rage. Something slippery that she cannot seem to put her finger on, and she does not entirely trust it. 

The elevator dings and Koschei steps forward, catching Theta’s elbows and holding her upright as the support of the doors gives way and she stumbles backward. 

He pulls her back inside and slaps the button for the basement, quietly simmering as he continues to stare her down. 

The doors close again, and the floor begins to move. 

A silence as thick as blood falls between them. He’s waiting for her to say something, but she doesn’t know where her thoughts start and end, doesn’t know how she can be thrown into an elevator, face down ultimatums, and be expected to shift her worldview simply because a man whom she despises demanded it of her. She has loathed herself for the entirety of fifteen years. It is not something that she can simply turn off like a tap. She is broken, she is bruised, she is bleeding, and that does not stop simply because someone suddenly decides that she is important to them. 

“I need help.” The admission is barely more than a whisper, the final gasp of her dying pride. It's not spoken because he convinced her of her brokenness; she simply knows that he is the only person that she can share this with. He is the other half of the secret that had pushed her over the edge, and she will never, ever be able to share that pain with anyone else.

A wave of grief rips through her and she turns away from him, cupping her hand over her mouth and screwing her eyes shut to fight back tears. She doesn’t want him to see her cry. She isn’t ready for that, and she expects that he isn’t either. 

“I know.” 

He does not approach her, does not touch her, and it’s another long moment before she adds, “You need help, too.”   
  
This time, he does not reply.

When the elevator finally reaches its destination, they exit together, walking slightly out of step as they weave in and out of the chariots in search of their shared tributes. 


	10. Chapter 10

Theta does not watch the parade. 

She is physically present, as contract demands that she be, but her awareness is divorced from the proceedings. She can’t help but turn over the words that Koschei had thrown at her in the elevator, and every time she tries to pry her mind away from that uncomfortable hellscape, it is drawn straight back as if newly magnetized. Though she is often frustrated, she is rarely confused, however, in this particular moment she can make neither head nor tails of what Koschei expects from their little arrangement. As far as she is concerned, she thinks that it would be best if they simply ignored each other when not subject to public view. Forced engagements do not automatically make her private struggles his concern, and he has no business asserting his need for control over whatever mess he thinks that she is currently going through. That energy is better spent on training their tributes or charming the press or quietly deposing an unjust system of government. This relationship is not real. She doesn't love him. To her, it seems as though there is no world in which this will result in anything other than strained cohabitation and a thousand forced smiles, so what’s the point in forcing the issue? 

Warm breath tickles her ear and she is vaguely aware of mumbling that she cannot parse. It takes her a moment to rouse her tongue into speaking. “What?”

Impatience wrinkles Koschei’s normally even tone. “You’re gone again. Someone is going to notice.” His hand hovers somewhere near the small of her back, fingers barely touching the fabric of Theta’s suit jacket. It taps lightly against her skin as the pair breathes and shifts, each one of them never quite in sync with the other. They are both nervous fidgeters. For better or for worse, they are both needlessly dynamic, and hardly the stoic, hardened war criminals that one would expect. 

“I’m right here,” Theta hisses, twisting around so that she might be able to stare him down. 

Koschei’s eyes are already on her -- discerning, expectant. She doesn’t know how long she’s been subject to his scrutiny, and the very idea of that kind of vulnerability sets her skin crawling. She let her guard down in the elevator, but her hand was forced, and she does not sit well with the idea that other things might be bleeding through in the aftermath. Until a couple days ago, she was not a person of many secrets, however her inner world has always been full to the brim with half-acknowledged truths ferreted away behind needlessly loud acts of resistance and a certain degree of recklessness. Most people do not bother to peer past the surface and see the person beneath, and it is incredibly unsettling to feel  _ seen _ . It leaves her nervous, flustered, and perilously unsteady. 

She doesn’t like it one bit. 

His hand grows a bit braver, pressing into her side as he draws her a bit closer. A lopsided shrug lifts one shoulder as he offers up a non-committal response, still speaking quietly enough to avoid being overheard by the other mentors, stylists, and representatives milling about the gray concrete that dominates the staging area. “Maybe. Maybe not. Everyone here knows you as a needlessly aggressive dolt, but I feel like I’m standing next to a ghost. People might start to get suspicious. Where’s the fire, Theta?”

He is taunting her, voice dancing through the words and lingering mischievously on convenient words, but Theta does not allow herself to be manipulated. She knows this game, and she is too exhausted to play. 

A crowd roars somewhere outside of her view, cheering for chariots that float across a series of screens that she has yet to so much as glance at. Everyone else here is distracted. Cameras and microphones are elsewhere. They may be in a crowd, but for all intents and purposes, they are even more alone than they had been in the elevator. That isolation is dangerous. It empowers him to peel back her skin and see what lies beneath, and she refuses to stand idly by while it happens.

A heavy sigh trickles out her nose, and she tosses her bangs out of her face with a quick shake of her head. “I’m not your pawn. I will continue to uphold my half of this agreement, and that’s it. I have no plans to throw you to the wolves, but if you start thinking that you can just order me about at your own  _ convenience _ , I will not hesitate to condemn us both. You want to corner me in elevators? Fine, but don’t expect me to turn around and pretend that I'm not a bit bothered.” She is more than bothered. She's shaken.

Koschei’s hand falls away from her back, dutifully returning to his pocket. “I only implied that you are not acting like yourself.” 

“I’m in an engagement that I would never agree to. I’m not supposed to be myself. Only a brainwashed imbecile would allow themselves to be tied down to a man who won his reputation through  _ murder _ .” Theta’s nervous gaze sweeps across the people around them as she speaks, making absolutely sure that no prying eyes turn in their direction. She fails to grasp why they have to have this conversation here of all places, unless he’s worried that she might try to dash as soon as their obligation is over. 

His dark eyebrows raise. “And how is that different than how you earned yours?”

“Because every second of every day, I resent myself for putting myself before others. I never stop hearing the echoes of those cannons, Koschei. Every beat of my heart, every drop of a pin, every unexpected noise reminds me of deaths that happened at my hands. Impossible choice or no, I did something that no child should have ever done, and I will always regret it. You want to know what that looks like? Sometimes it looks like rage, and sometimes it looks like  _ this _ . Admitting that there’s a problem isn’t the same thing as solving it, and I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of pretending that you fixed me. You didn’t, and you won’t. This isn’t  _ fixable _ . This is human, this is surviving, and that will always be messy. The word doesn’t stop spinning just because you think it should.”

Theta doesn’t notice her voice creeping steadily upward in volume and intensity until Koschei moves to shush her, lips hovering a hair's breadth away from hers in a faux tableau of intimacy. 

His fingers tangle in her hair.

She steps on his foot. Hard. 

He does not grant her space, but faint amusement flickers in his eyes and flirts with the set of his mouth. 

“People are watching,” Koschei warns after a brief pause, casting a pointed glance sideways before returning his eyes to hers. 

Theta squints slightly as she searches for whatever thoughts lie behind the impenetrable glass of his gaze, but she is met only with her own reflection. A dozen questions sit perched upon the tip of her tongue, each one too abstract to verbalize and unlikely to be met with a candid answer. Unfair that he demands truth from her while wildly oscillating between positions himself. It is impossible to gauge where persona ends and truth begins with him, and whether or not his little breaks in demeanor are calculated risks or accidental slips. She fears both possibilities equally, and if she could, she would turn her back and never face him again. 

A reality in which he is coldly puppeteering the situation is awful, but so is a reality in which he dares to genuinely care.

When Theta speaks, she takes more care to control her volume, practically writing the words onto his lips. “They’re always watching. How do you think we wound up in this mess in the first place? Years of surveillance. Folders upon folders of blackmail. They’ve had eyes on us since the very moment our names were reaped. We’re marked for misery, you and me."

Koschei’s smile widens. “Then don’t give them misery. Dare to seize joy. We could rule this place, you and I. It’s a better proposal than the ring, I’d say, and not just because it’s my own idea.”

“I don’t want to rule anything.” Her eyes fall downward, seeking out the cold comfort of the concrete floor but finding only the perplexing curl of his mouth, still far too close to hers. Once again, even with his hands in her hair and the pressure of her foot on his, she is struck by the fragility of the space between them, so delicate that a mere shiver could shatter it.

The words that fall upon her lips are barely louder than his steady breaths. “Don’t you? Why else would you struggle so hard? You despise the people in power now, would it not be better to be one of them? Think of the platform you and I share. Two victors. Love written in the stars themselves. We can win this game; all you have to do is play.”

Somewhere else, the crowd continues to cheer, ushering another crop of tributes towards the inevitability of mass slaughter. It coats Theta’s tongue in distaste, and she does her best to forget that she will be forced to look two of those poor children in the eyes tonight and begin to teach them a hundred tricks that will never be strong enough to save them. Sparrow and Rennette might be able to cling on for a while, but death will come for them as quickly and certainly as it has come for every single one of her mentees. No one ever survives. It has always just been her and Koschei, and as far as she knows, it always will be. 

Two souls trapped in a horrible cycle with no reprieve. 

From any other person, the offer might be tempting. She has often dreamed of dismantling the system, destroying it and assuring the safety of all those who are currently murdered and oppressed and cast aside ‘for the glory of Panem,’ but she does not trust Koschei to share her goals. He is one of them. He speaks to the press and brushes shoulders with the rich and powerful and -- most importantly -- he had failed to support her when it had mattered. 

She will never, ever forget that he abandoned her all those years ago. She will cling to that reminder no matter how many times he claims to be on her side and offers her a lifeline. He left her alone in the Arena, and there is no guarantee that he won’t do it again. He has always been a man who ardently pursued his own interests at the expense of others.

Her tongue wets her lips as she tempers her anger enough to assure that her voice will not overcome the necessary whisper. “I’ve won one game before, and it destroyed me. I won’t play another. Especially not with  _ you _ .”

She takes a careful step backward and pivots, fully intending to storm away, but then she thinks better of it. She stops mid-step and turns back towards him, closing the distance so quickly that there is a real risk of collision. She stops just short, back in that fragile whisper of space. “You want fire? You got it. The President may want me on a leash, yeah, but I won’t let you hold it. I won’t heel at your command, I won’t sit and shake hands, and I’ll bark if I want  _ out _ . Are we understood?”

The scant air between them crackles with untamed energy.

Koschei’s demeanor immediately chills, and he steps past her, leaning in and forcing him to turn her head to track his movement. “Noted.”

Theta does not grace Koschei with the dignity of a reply, but she intently watches his back as he walks away with narrowed eyes and no small amount of suspicion. His pace is jaunty and his hands leave his pockets, arms outstretched as he approaches one of the victors from District 4. The change is so marked that it almost seems as though a switch has been flipped, and to her, that is all the more reason not to trust him. 

The pounding of ironshod hooves echoes in the concrete tunnel as the chariots return, but Theta does not stick around to greet her tributes with glowing praise and proud smiles. Instead, she disappears, breaking contract and vanishing back into the elevators. In this moment, there is nothing she wants more than the familiar torture of her own company. 


	11. Chapter 11

A knock splits the silence. 

From her position draped over an armchair in the corner of the room, Theta casts a disdainful eye towards the door. 

Upon abandoning her duties at the Tribute Parade, she immediately sequestered herself in the bedroom that she and Koschei share in search of a bit of peace and quiet. Ever since they had arrived in the Capitol, she has felt intensely scrutinized. She hears the whir of cameras in every corner, faces each and every stranger with extreme paranoia, worries as soon as she leaves Koschei’s company -- fearful that someone, somewhere had overheard their conversations and discovered the truth. It is a stifling mindset, and she is extremely conscious of the damp, nervous sweat that seeps from every pore of her skin. In the privacy of her own room, she shed half of her clothes, baring her scars to the open air. It made it a tiny bit easier to breathe and lessens some of the tension that’s laced into her muscles, but it does not clear the cloud of doubts that clings to her like a plague. 

When the insistent tapping interrupts her careening train of thought, she jerks upward in a panic, offering up a snappish “I’m busy.” 

The noise persists.

Convinced that it must be Koschei, Theta drags herself from the comfort of the chair and cracks the door open just enough to stick her head through the opening. However, instead of finding herself nose to nose with the bane of her existence, she stares straight at the exposed collarbones of a tall and formidable redhead. 

Amy Pond is all tiered skirts and structured jacket, and wearing an absurd face of makeup that no one should be able to pull off, and yet she still manages to look absolutely stunning. She is an unstoppable wildfire of a human being, and has been the head stylist assigned to District 3 for a handful of years, despite being significantly younger than Theta. It is, however, no small wonder that she worked her way up through the stylist ranks so quickly, given that she has the unerring ability to wrestle even the most disastrous of trends into something vaguely presentable. 

Though Theta and Amy are not friends, strictly speaking -- more for lack of engagement on Theta’s part than lack of effort on Amy’s -- they have been known to find themselves swept up by trouble together at the occasional shared party. A couple years back, they competed to see who could spill red wine on the most strangers. Amy won. Amy always wins, and the prize is almost always an exchange of secrets. Outside of Koschei, Amy is the only person who knows about Rose, and the only person who has seen the scars seared into Theta’s arm. 

"You left tributes alone with Koschei. You never do that," Amy says, bypassing traditional greetings, pushing the door further open, and sweeping past Theta in a swirl of burgundy and teal.

Theta takes her time as she closes the door. Teeth work against the inside of her cheek and green eyes scrape the ground as she attempts to summon enough will to speak the lies that have become her truth. 

“I trust him. We’re engaged. He can do his job. I don’t need to be there.” The words spill forth a bit too quickly. Sentences bump up against each other and jostle for space, birthed of a single breath and lined with the desperate fear of discovery. 

Though Theta lies often, she is not particularly skilled at it. After all, until a couple of days ago, it was an unnecessary art. Lies were for people who wished to justify their selfishness and look the other way when institutions built on suffering benefitted them. Lies were for people with families and friends and a desperate need for steady income. Lies were for people who held valuable lives in their hands, and before the cursed directive reached her ears, Theta held her life and her life alone, and that was  _ far _ from motivating. 

Of course, circumstances have changed since then. 

“Yeah. About that --” Amy starts, perching on the edge of the bed and looking at Theta with a tilted head and extraordinary interest. “Were you going to tell me, or was I just supposed to find out from everyone else? I should’ve guessed when Koschei called me and asked for wardrobe options, but at the time, I thought he was just being  _ theatrical _ .” 

Still avoiding eye contact, Theta scuffs the toe of her shoe against the floorboards and clasps her hands behind her back, pressing her scarred forearm against the fabric of her shirt. Had she been expecting visitors, she would have left the jacket on, but she had counted on at least a couple of hours of isolation before anyone thought to look for her. 

“You were busy. I was busy.” A half-smile forces its way across her face. “I assumed the news’d get round at some point. Always does.”

Amy’s pout becomes more pronounced and in response, Theta stretches the lie a bit further, leaning forward and injecting so much desperate enthusiasm into her voice that it almost manages to be convincing. “It’s all a bit exciting, isn’t it? Never really thought about it before. Always thought I’d be dead before marriage, if I’m honest. Not that there isn’t still time and all.”

Amy’s gaze cuts Theta to her very core -- full of hope, but always wary of deception. It is the look of someone who has always dared to dream, but is always forced to settle for compromises. Theta has seen countless other people both in the Capitol and outside of it wear that same expression, but that normality makes it no less  _ biting _ . 

Theta shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot, eyes bouncing from one point of the room to another, flitting across the stylist's face only briefly. 

“Do you need a drink? I need a drink,” Amy declares after a lengthy pause, rising to her feet and stepping past Theta without waiting for an answer. 

Knowing that the woman will venture out with or without her, Theta follows. For a moment, she glances back over her shoulder, considering grabbing the jacket and saving her arms and hands from the strain of her current posture, but in the end, she decides that it isn’t worth the effort. She’ll probably be fine. Surely Amy knows better than to breach the forbidden subject of the Games and the fatal actions that had etched the scars into her skin. 

In short order, Amy rifles through the cabinets in the kitchen, coming away with a bottle of wine and a set of glasses that Theta did not even know existed. Noting the confusion etched across her face, Amy supplies an explanation, leaning against the marble countertop of the island as she works at the top of the bottle. 

“Romana invites me over for chats and drinks on occasion. Someone’s gotta keep her sane given that you and Koschei tend to go nuclear as soon as the Games start,” Amy comments dryly, passing Theta an overly generous serving of red wine before pouring her own. “The number of times the two of you disappear on her, it’s like you forget that she mourns the tributes, too. Though I suppose it makes more sense now, knowing that the two of you were closer than anyone thought. Three’s a crowd.”   


Guilt wells in Theta’s heart and the corners of her eyes, and she’s quick to drown it in a large sip of wine. In truth, she does tend to forget that Romana gets closer to the children than she and Koschei could ever possibly manage. Theta is held back by the depth of her own pain, and Koschei, well, Theta doesn’t know what Koschei’s damage is. For fifteen years, she assumed that he must contain nothing but the basest, most selfish form of casual evil, but in those rare moments when the mask slips and his anger and frustration seep through, she thinks that she can see the human being that sits beneath that veneer of charm and horror. It makes the world a bit more grey, a bit more complicated, and a great deal more difficult to navigate. 

It is easy to hate someone; it is harder to forgive them. 

“How’s Rory?” Theta asks once she swallows, desperately trying to steer the subject away from her lack of consideration for Romana’s feelings. 

Amy swirls her glass in idle circles, staring at the crimson vortex. "He's fine."

"Rory's never fine."

"Well, he's normal, then. And don't think I don't notice you changing the subject, missy. What’s this about the engagement? You, Koschei, spill.”

A shrug lifts Theta’s shoulders. “I don’t know if there’s anything worth spilling. We’ve known each other for a long time, he asked, I said yes. Hardly a tale for the ages. When you and Rory were married, no one was prodding you for the intimate details of your courtship. ‘Congratulations on finding your person, would you mind answering this short survey on the paths that led both of you here?’” Her tongue wraps around the hypothetical with mocking disdain. 

“I’m not asking as a journalist, Theta. I’m asking as a friend. Friends talk about their lives.” The words drip off of Amy’s tongue with droll irritation as she takes another sip of her wine.    
  
Theta’s chin snaps up, green eyes seeking out brown ones as her jaw slackens in genuine surprise. “Are we friends?” Even as she asks it, it feels like a ridiculous question. Most people assume friendship as a default when they chat with people often, but Victors are so thoroughly surrounded with greed and reverence and fear that things are never as simple as ‘I like speaking with you, so we must be friends.’ Theta always assumed that Amy was sticking around to make her job easier or to stave off unseen boredom, and if it was true, she would not have held it against her. Life is long, living is difficult, and distraction can be hard to come by. She would not blame anyone for using her that way. At least it’s  _ pleasant _

A laugh bubbles forth. “I should hope so. You know my life. I know enough about you that I’ve seen  _ that _ .” Amy gestures in the direction of Theta’s scarred forearm with the hand that holds the wine glass. “I’ll never really understand what you went through, but I’m willing to listen if you ever want to share, and that tends to be a thing that friends do.” 

Theta’s heart and mind begin to race, and it takes her a long moment to wring a coherent thought from the chaos. “I don’t know. I don’t have many friends.”

“Course you don’t. This place is designed to tear you apart, isn’t it? It would do that even if you weren’t, y’know,  _ you _ .” Amy leans into the final word with the weight of a dozen unspoken observations, and Theta does not press for an explanation. She knows that it contains a thousand acts of rebellion and dozens of losing battles. Amy was not part of the narrative when the war first began, but she has been on the front lines for long enough to be familiar with the fallout. 

“I --” The sound catches in Theta’s throat. “I don’t know what to say. Fancy that, me -- lost for words. Used to be a time that people would be willing to pay for that.” 

Koschei tried to bargain for it yesterday when her mind kept running back to raccoons at the expense of their shared sanity.    
  
A warm smile slips across Amy’s lips. “You could start with answering my question, and we can circle back around to the other stuff later. Engagement. Share. I love a good love story.”

For a terrible moment, Theta is tempted to tell the truth. After all, most friendships are expected to be rooted in truth and respect, and it feels horribly disingenuous to respond to a very direct offer of friendship with an insidious web of lies, but she has no other choice. Outside of her and Koschei’s assurance of mutual destruction, there are no guarantees of secrecy, not even between friends. 

She wets her lips before she speaks, eyes settling on her drink in a manner that plays as coy but is actually deeply uncomfortable. “He’s … the only person in my life that has half a chance of understanding who I am, and he took the initiative to talk me off of more than one ledge. It’s not dramatic, it’s not easy, and it’s not always perfect, but it is something, and I desperately needed something.” 

It plays closer to the truth than she had initially intended. Theta hopes that it sounds enough like love to be convincing, but she’s not entirely sure that she knows what love looks like anymore. She grew up in the absence of it, wrapped in a cocoon of grief and loss and loneliness, and she is no longer the infatuated teenager that sat beside the fireplace with Rose Tyler and dared to dream of a better life. She does not think that whatever forced and fragile thing that she and Koschei hold between them resembles proper love, but if she squints and tilts her head, she thinks can look far enough past the rage and the frustration and to catch a glimpse of compassion and empathy. 

Perhaps, given time, this fake engagement can grow into something meaningful, or maybe it will simply fade away like a hundred other fragile hopes and dreams, destroyed by their unwillingness to look past their troubled history and their countless personal flaws. There is no telling which fate might befall them. It is a decision made in tandem, and subject to countless outside variables. A shiver of dread floods her body at the very thought. It does not matter whether or not Amy stands at her side or Koschei bothers to love her. Only a handful of possible futures lay before her, and each one is more terrifying than the last. 

She does not think that she can love Koschei, but hating him is exhausting.

“Love’s never easy,” Amy says as she sips her wine. “It’s not about falling for somebody. It’s about choosing them, over and over again, even when they say something stupid or you get in a fight or you have a bad day and don’t believe in love anymore. Rory and I deal with that sort of thing all the time, and we don’t even have to mess with the cameras or the Games or whatever other stuff they throw on you.” 

She leans forward, copper hair elegantly slipping over her shoulder as she puts a gentle hand on Theta’s arm. “Even if it’s not love yet, I want this for you. The way you just looked at me when I said I was your friend…” she trails off, eyes and lips busying themselves with her wine for a thoughtful moment. “I don’t want you to feel alone anymore.”

The front door of the apartment creaks on its hinges, and Amy’s hand falls away. 

“Is Theta here?” Romana’s voice cuts through open air and solid walls alike, frustration threatening to overcome her usual poise. Theta does not blame her for being angry. She is well aware that she abandoned the rest of the team in favor of licking her own wounds and miring in her own self-pity, and though she does not feel guilty for retreating, it was hardly a professional thing to do.

“Yes,” Amy answers on Theta’s behalf before finishing off her glass of wine. “We’re chatting.”

“Tell her I need to talk to her later, and she can’t keep running out on her duties.”   
  
The stylist's mischievous gaze dances over to Theta, who finishes off her own glass with a grimace.    
  
“She wouldn’t dream of it, Romana. You know how it is. Young love. Gets people all confused.” 

Amy winks, and Theta wrinkles her nose. 

Dropping her voice, Amy says, "Hey. Do me a favor and come to Caesar’s party tomorrow. Bring Koschei. Wear one of the things he has for you. It'd net me some good will if I could get you both there, and I could use a bit of that right now. Plus, I know the tributes are under curfew by then, so I’m not drawing you away from any official duties.”   
  
Theta sets her empty glass down with a grumble. “Probably not the best idea. Caesar looked fit to murder me yesterday.” It is not entirely true. If anything, he had been more afraid than murderous, but it is easier to equate the two than engage with any degree of nuance.    
  
Amy waves away the concern with her right hand. “Caesar’s Caesar. You gave him a good interview, and he doesn’t have any reason to talk to you outside of it. Just don’t start fights and you’ll be fine. You don’t even have to stay the whole time. Just do a couple turns of the room and tell people that I sent you, okay?”   
  
“One turn of the room,” Theta places her palms flat against the counter, leaning into it as she negotiates her position. 

“And maybe a dance. You love a dance. Said so at my wedding.”

“Sure. Fine. One turn. One dance. Outfit. Koschei. Your name. Got it.” 


	12. Chapter 12

Theta is clad head to toe in a smoky crimson that speaks of death. 

Lightning flashes as the fabric catches the light. Its trails are white and stark and an incessant reminder of the lives that she ended, the perfect mirror to the scars that lie hidden beneath layered sleeves. The brightness glimmers at the very edges of her vision, drawing her attention even when she tries to ignore it, lit by every shift of her arms and swell of her breath. It is, perhaps, the worst design choice possible for a person who both constantly seeks out movement and insists on ignoring her own history, and she doesn’t like it one bit. 

Theta did not think that she would be wishing to return to the stars that had defined her a couple days ago, but the stars -- though loud -- felt safer. She normally surrounds herself in blues and greys -- neutral tones that balance out the self-loathing that boils within her blood and the suspicion with which people meet her eyes. She prefers night, hope, and solace to storms, suffering, and power, but these design choices are never about her. They are about who she is  _ supposed _ to be, and currently, she is doomed to be the match of the man beside her. 

Koschei is draped in white. Red jewels drip from his throat, his chest, his back, clustered in locations that mark the lives he took and the manner in which he did so. As a tribute, he was painfully prolific. His total kill count was not quite as high as Theta, but his kills were bloodier, more personal, positively brutal. He fought tooth and nail for every inch of his life. She annihilated her entire field before anyone even began to tire. It is no wonder that they carry their burdens differently. 

“How’s your hand?” Theta asks as she reluctantly slips her arm through his, conscious of the eyes that are already on them, even though they have yet to enter the venue.

It is an incredibly snide question, and Koschei returns an incredibly snide answer. “Can’t say that it hasn’t been better. You have very sharp teeth, you know that?”    
  
“Wouldn’t know. Haven’t bitten anyone before. Weird to start now. Maybe it’s the raccoons.” There’s a mischievous gleam in her eyes and an uncontrollable glee in her grin that almost pass for joy. She probably would have dropped the raccoons by now if Koschei had not specifically mentioned that it bothered him. The one way to guarantee that she does something is to tell her that she can’t. That was true when she was young, and it continues to be true now.    
  
A pause precedes his reply. “Am I engaged to a raccoon or to you?” He is careful to remain diplomatic as he picks his way around the words, and she sees his eyes dart sideways as they pass people. 

A shrug lifts her shoulders and the grin lingers. “We both have opposable thumbs, so who knows? Very tricky to tell the difference. Surprisingly advanced, raccoons. Wash their food and everything.”

“Bold of you to claim to be civilized.” 

Theta inhales sharply, ready to argue, but the doors swing wide, and two steps find them poised on the top of a grand staircase. The familiar masses cavort below in a shifting rainbow of pride, greed, and gluttony. A heavy sigh drops from her lips and settles over her shoulders as she moves to start the descent, but Koschei holds her back like an anchor set against the tide.    
  
“What?” she demands with a barbed tongue, ready to fight. She does not want to be here. It reminds her of the painful judgement of her abridged victory tour. She had faced down dozens of scathing questions every evening, each spoken over a primly held glass of champagne, and each wondering the degree to which her cheating had been intentional. Every question was met with tears or a blank stare, and more than once, a handler was forced to physically steer her away when word choice tread too close to her pain and she threatened to fly at strangers with kicking feet and closed fists. However, for the past twelve or so years, her fights have consisted only of bandied words and warring ideals ... and, apparently, the occasional addition of gnashing teeth. 

She should not be so surprised. Koschei has always been able to bring out the worst in her. 

A hush begins to settle over the crowd. It moves slowly at first, and then picks up speed, rushing towards the back of the room with an undeniable degree of ruthlessness. 

Theta moves to turn her head to look down at them, curious as to what might have happened, but Koschei catches her chin in his hand, keeping her eyes on him. A brave move, considering how quickly and readily she had sunk her teeth into his flesh for a similar affront a mere day ago. 

His hand shifts downward, palm pressing against the side of her neck as his thumb whispers over the vulnerable skin of her throat. Her breath catches in her throat, and her heart threatens to race away from her. Her tongue nervously swipes across her lips. "What are you doing?"

"Putting on a show. It's what they want."

Thumb still stroking, he leans in closer and plants a gentle whisper of a kiss on her cheek. It is only her awareness of the hundreds of eyes on them and the way his touch on her throat threatens to make her body melt beneath her that keeps a scowl off of her face. 

When he finally draws back, she can see the satisfaction in his smirk and the glimmer in his gaze. Koschei is a man who knows what he's doing, and she deeply resents him for it. She fails to understand why all of this should come easily to him, yet the world must watch her flounder. She is just as strong as he is -- more so, even, since she dares to challenge authority in a way that the so-called Master never would -- but she's been placed in a position in which she must repeatedly follow his lead because he knows the steps and she doesn't. It's humiliating, and it makes her skin crawl. 

Her mind drifts away from the moment again -- focused on her rage and irritation and the memory of the steady, inexorable lull of his hand on her throat -- and by the time it's returned, they've managed to work their way into the repulsive crowd. There's a flute of champagne in her hand, and though she is unsure where it came from or how it got there, she drains it in a single rush of bubbles, setting it down on a passing tray. In the process, she stumbles slightly. One hand finds Koshchei's shoulder for balance as she rights herself, interrupting his conversation as he holds court with one stranger or another. 

Theta meets his narrowed gaze with a breezy smile, "Don't mind me. Uncomfortable shoes. Never know what to do with those." 

What is one more lie atop a mountain of them? 

Theta peels herself away from him, not caring whether or not she is expected to remain glued to his side. After all, the turn of the room and the bringing of Koschei were two separate clauses in her promise to Amy. There is no reason why she need bind them together. Engaged couples are sometimes apart. A ring does not rob one of one's agency or individuality.

She does not make it far before she is stopped by a hand on her elbow and a congratulations from a man who she recognizes but whose name she can't remember. 

Three steps later she is surrounded by a group of giggling young women who desperately want to see the ring and are too interested in the wedding date and details for her liking. 

Five steps and Theta nearly collides with the current Gamemaker, an imposing-looking spire of a woman who barely tolerates her. "Evening, Ushas."

Ushas offers her an absolutely scathing once-over, eyes lingering on first the flickering lighting in her suit and then the ring before speaking a short, noncommittal "Theta" and walking straight on by. 

At this point, it's expected behavior, but that does not stop the heat of indignation from crawling beneath Theta's skin and flushing red across her neck. 

Theta swipes another glass of champagne from a passing server and downs it just as quickly as the first one, and is only stopped two more times before she makes it to the solace of a table spread with more food than anyone in the outlying districts will see in their entire lives. It sickens her, as it always does, but that doesn't stop her from plucking a single cookie from an overloaded tray. She closes her eyes as the flavor spreads across her tongue, trying to forget where she is and the storm that deposited her here long enough to enjoy it. She almost succeeds. 

She drowns it in yet another glass of champagne, and -- feeling the fog spread through her mind and the buzz crackle in her fingertips -- resolves to do the only thing that brings her joy at these events: ruining them, just a little bit. 

There's a table in the corner with an array of identical pink drinks. Each one barely more than a mouthful, designed to be consumed in the privacy of a bathroom so that one might vacate one's stomach before returning to the party and gorging oneself a second time. It's a morally disgusting practice, and she has never held much patience or sympathy for those who participate in it. However, she discovered several years ago that a widely available treatment for chronic headaches, when dissolved in the drinks, makes them completely ineffective. Easy enough to drop in a few tablets of her own design and watch the wicked mill about in confusion when their plans go awry. 

Or at least, it's  _ usually _ easy. 

Her fingers fumble in her pocket as she pulls out a clear plastic pouch, and before she can blink, Koschei has materialized at her elbow, seemingly sprung whole cloth from the very air itself. The lock he has on her is endlessly infuriating. It's as if he always knows the worst time to drift back into her orbit.

"What are you doing?" he asks, eyes flicking between the packet of small white pills and the drinks. Dark eyebrows raise with something that almost seems to resemble genuine interest, rather than the stark disapproval that she expected. 

"Chemistry.” Theta keeps the word short, angry, and uninviting, however, it is not strong enough to banish him from her company. Nothing ever is. 

Amusement frays the edges of his tone and a gleeful smile dares to trespass across his face. "Looks an awful lot like anarchy. Are you poisoning people, Theta?"

"No." The word is short and to the point, but realizing that he will inevitably press the point, she mutters her way through the vague semblance of a drunken explanation. "The tablets neutralize the drink. Figured it out once when Romana had a headache and then turned right around and expected this to work. Did a few experiments, refined the dosage, removed allergens, made sure it didn't cross react with anything else, and I get the satisfaction of knowing that less food is wasted tonight. No harm done, technically, but very little good either. It’s all kind of a wash, isn’t it?" 

There’s a moment of rising panic as she starts to wonder why she bothers with this. It had taken her weeks to refine the concoction enough to ensure that it accomplished its goals while still being completely harmless, yet like the pebble bouncing off of the concrete and steel of the buildings back home, it doesn’t accomplish anything. It doesn’t fix the fact that thousands upon thousands of people go to bed hungry every night. It doesn’t guarantee that this food makes it into the hands that need it. It is little more than a mild inconvenience that prevents her from having to play witness to one of the darker practices that dominate these gatherings. If anything, all she’s doing is absolving her own conscience, and her conscience is already so far gone that it might as well be ruled a lost cause. 

Her eyes flick upward, bright and pleading, meeting Koschei’s in the space between them. His lips part, and she can see the tip of his tongue working against the delicate point of a canine as he considers both her and the situation. It is a long moment before he finally speaks, asking a wholly unexpected question.

"Do you want a distraction?"

Genuine shock settles across her face, and it takes her a moment to process the offer. "What?"

Koschei leans a bit closer, voice lowering conspiratorially. "I asked if you wanted a distraction. I'm  _ very _ good at those." 

The words wash over her with that increasingly familiar break of peppermint, warm and cold at the same time. Theta wonders if he carries them -- a stash of candies tucked away in a pocket somewhere -- but she has never once seen him pull one out. Granted, she has been paying far less attention to him than he has to her. Her perception is hardly a reliable gauge. 

"Are you offering to help?" She doesn’t bother to chase the surprise from her tone. 

A shrug rolls across his shoulders. "Maybe. The evening's dull and they deserve it. Can't say no to a bit of  _ righteous suffering _ ."

"No one's suffering."

A flash of a smile -- blindingly white, knowing, wolfish. "If you say so. Besides, watching you get escorted out of a party is only fun if I'm the one who ratted you out, and seeing as I can no longer do that, I might as well rob others of the opportunity." 

Theta inhales sharply, eyes turning toward the ceiling as she filters through a hundred memories of a hundred failed parties, trying to figure out which ones he may have been responsible for. Aside from the one instance when he screamed at her, she spent so little time with him that it seems impossible that he might have devoted such an effort to swatting a fly that perpetually hovered on the opposite side of a ballroom. 

“ _ When _ \-- ?” The question begins with great hesitation and dies before she can finish it. 

Koschei waves it away. “Doesn’t matter. Plus, we owe Amelia a dance, and I would rather you not stab me the next time I touch you."

"I don't use weapons." The claim is true on only the most basic and superficial of levels. If given access, opportunity, and motivation, Theta would absolutely stab someone, which is part of why she makes such a conscious and loud effort to separate herself from anything that would allow her to act on that temptation. 

His smile continues to linger as his gaze darts between her eyes and her lips. "I’m sure you would get creative. So, is that a yes?"

She flounders for a long moment -- tongue and mind trying and failing to latch onto words and feelings -- before surfacing with a half-hearted "I suppose."

"Excellent."

Koschei pivots with an excited snap and a swirl of coattails and begins to work his way through the bustling space. It takes him a few minutes to reach his destination as he, like Theta, is too often pulled aside by random individuals. He greets them all with a handshake and a degree of feigned interest that Theta could never manage. Koschei’s the proverbial mayor of this place, and Theta is the brooding outsider who has never quite managed to settle in, and she doesn’t quite understand what he stands to gain by helping her with this little insubordination. Maybe he’s just as tired of it all as she is. 

He interrupts the band and hopping onto the stage with an ease that can only be managed by a beloved celebrity. Had Theta attempted such a move, she would have been immediately removed from the premises. For him, however, the crowd gathers closer -- willing, eager, painfully enthusiastic.

When he speaks, his voice and demeanor shift, entirely consumed by sheer showmanship. “Ladies, I need a volunteer from the audience. Single, if you would. Should something go terribly wrong, I would prefer not to answer to your husband or fiancé. Being one, I understand the urge to raze an entire city should an early death befall your partner at anyone’s hands but your own.”

Hands raise, mouths buzz, and Theta’s eyes roll skyward. 

Koschei buys her more time than she needs. He has barely finished the first magic trick by the time she has distributed the tablets among the drinks and tuck the partially empty pouch back into her pocket, however, time spent onstage is time spent with his focus away from her, so she settles against a wall with her arms crossed, waiting for him to finish. It’s all simple stuff -- misdirection and sleight of hand -- but the crowd and his blush-colored volunteer eat it up with childlike wonder. 

A tray passes, and Theta grabs another drink. Her fourth in very short order, but who’s counting? 

It is a painfully long ten minutes before Koschei finally makes eye contact with her from across the room. She raises her glass in a mocking toast, eyebrow quirked in an unspoken question. He meets it with a feral grin. 

“Thank you for being such a lovely audience, but I will return you to your scheduled entertainment.” A smattering of boos rise from the gathered attendees. Koschei shushes them with a quick gesture before turning his attention back to the band. “Might I request something slow? I promised a radiant and  _ vexing _ woman a dance.”

Heads turn in her direction. Theta buries her attention in her champagne. Koschei removes himself from centerstage with a jovial skip of his feet. 

This time, the crowd parts for him, and all too quickly, Koschei extends a hand and in invitation towards her. Conscious of the unwanted, prying eyes upon them, she accepts it with her free hand. With his other, he plucks the unfinished glass of champagne from her grasp, finishing it off before passing it to a random person behind him.    
  
“Shall we, love?”   
  
She doesn’t quite manage an answer, and he doesn’t wait for her to figure it out before sweeping her away in the rising tide of music.


	13. Chapter 13

The world fades from a rush of color, light, and dizziness into the dull, green walls of their bedroom and a headache that keeps getting worse.

Sun slips through the parted shutters, and its brightness compels Theta to bury her face in a pillow with a muffled groan. The previous evening was built upon a mountain of mistakes, each one in the form of a glass of bubbling light. The champagne was her life raft, easing her into the waters on this first night out. One day, she will have to swim under her own power -- faking smiles and leaning into his touch and biting back the truth -- but she is not yet ready for that. 

However, help comes with a price. 

Theta turns her head slightly. Light sears the inside of her eyelids, and she keeps them tightly closed as she ventures a quiet "Koschei?" into the unseen reaches of the room. 

Only silence answers her call.

With great effort, she manages to pry open a single eye. A pile of pillows and blankets sits on the open half of the bed, artfully arranged to create the illusion that they never left the bed. Every night, Koschei sets up his makeshift place on the floor, and every morning, he takes painstaking effort to construct the lie that they are sharing a bed, just in case some uninvited soul happens to shove their nose in throughout the day. Of course, he has not stopped complaining about the vague pain in his back and the general discomfort of the situation, but he has not demanded change or leveraged influence, even though he very well could have. She will not force him to remain on the floor forever, however, she is not yet prepared to be in close proximity to him while unconscious, vulnerable, and unable to shield herself with arguments and flippancy and jokes that never land. 

On a practical and intellectual level, distance between them is dangerous. It breeds distrust and makes it harder to maintain the lie. It bars them from swapping pain and stories and forging a bond strong enough to keep them safe. But distance is hard to let go of, because it also builds the illusion of safety. Even when all observations point to the contrary, she cannot seem to stop viewing him as a threat. He is too observant, too sharp, too quick to call her on her flaws.  
  
People with good intentions don't monitor others that closely, unless, of course, they're _afraid_.   


When Theta is afraid, she has a habit of running away from her problems, turning her back and building walls and burying them so deeply that they might never again see the light of day. Koschei, on the other hand -- fearful or otherwise -- has placed the entirety of his focus on her. He dissects each and every one of her actions, using them as microcosms with which he might extrapolate the whole. He watches. He waits. He pokes and prods until he understands. 

As much as she resents him for it, Koschei’s approach to the situation is far more effective than hers. While Theta drowned in her sorrow, he kept his head -- charming the collected elite, fulfilling their obligations, and managing her. He anticipates her in a way that she cannot anticipate him, and it tilts the ground between them, and though she knows that it would not be all that difficult to mirror his behavior and claw her way back into a position of power, doing so would mean admitting that he was right and she was wrong. Call her childish, but she would rather do almost anything else. 

Her pain runs deep. No one can fix fifteen years of insults and abandonment with sleight of hand and a promise, not even someone with a moniker as telling as ‘The Master.’

After an agonizing few minutes marked only by the throbbing of her head, Theta sets about dragging herself out of bed. If she stays here, she is resigning herself to several more hours of uninterrupted suffering, but if she can get some water into her parched body, a bite of food in her roiling stomach, and a breath of air on her face, she has half a chance of feeling better before lunch. 

She clings to the wall as she slips into the main living space, conscious of her disheveled state and the pain and fatigue that threaten to chase her to the floor. Upon reaching the kitchen, she pours herself a glass of water, shaking hands sloshing an accidental spill onto the floor. She ignores it. Someone else will come by to clean it up so that no one slips. Someone always does.    
  
She gulps down the glass’ contents too quickly, and for a moment she fears that she might lose her stomach entirely. With a few deep breaths and a curled fist pressed tightly against her mouth, she manages to steady herself enough that the moment of fear passes without incident. She takes her time with the second, slipping and closing her eyes in turn as she desperately tries to fight off the throb of the headache and the fatigue that dogs her movements. 

She crosses the room slowly, a single hand wrapping around the handle of a cabinet as a quiet series of words float across the apartment -- a dry list of deaths rolled by a familiar tongue. 

“Drowning, blunt force trauma, blunt force trauma again, burning, stabbing, electrocution…”

Panic rises in her belly. It's a familiar list: the rundown of winners and how they executed their final kills. Amongst all the pageantry of the engagement, she forgot about the immediacy of the current Games and the pair of tributes that are looking to them for hope and guidance. They have scant hours to learn the landscape from those who have experienced it -- made even less by the midday demand to turn them over to outside training with the children from the other Districts -- and she has already failed to report to the first session of it. 

Food forgotten, Theta races down the hallway. She turns the corner with skidding feet, chest heaving as tired lungs struggle for air. Her eyes leap from Koschei at the front of the parlor to the two children sitting attentively at the couch, painfully aware of the judgement that must lurk in their stares, even though she cannot focus well enough to see it. 

“I’m sorry, I forgot --” she can’t finish the thought. Her vision dims and swims and she clings to the back of a chair in a desperate bid to keep herself upright. “I --”   
  
“Is she okay?” Rennette’s question is tentative. Quiet. Born of a child’s fearful concern of the unfamiliar. 

“We had a long night. Should you win, you may eventually become familiar with those.” Koschei’s tone is uncharacteristically icy. It speaks not only to the rowdiness of parties, but to nights of endless suffering, bought and paid for by those with a taste for power. Theta’s attitude and general lack of popularity spared her that particular fate, but she knows how pervasive the practice is within the small circle of victors, especially among the select few that strike an even chord between attractive, charismatic, and desirable. Everything about their lives is a commodity, ruled and reaped by unseen hands. 

For the first time, it occurs to her that their fabricated tale might save Koschei from being subjected to that particular torment. He may despise her, but engagement alters the narrative and prevents the hungry from knocking on doors and soliciting selfish desires. There is profit to be made elsewhere -- through wedding plans and press appearances and their forced presence at a hundred events that they never once considered attending -- all of which are unwanted, but none of which are as traumatizing as the alternative. 

“I'm fine. I was fine. I will be fine." Theta stumbles over time and tenses in an attempt to cobble together the truth. She glances up, ill-kempt hair sliding away from her face as she appeals to Koschei for help. 

“Do you have…” The question fades away as Theta looks towards the ceiling, hand making idle circles next to her aching head as she searches for coherent thought. Illness is far from a familiar vice. One of the very, very few benefits reaped from winning the Games is a brand of preventative care that is often denied to casual citizens. Hangovers, however, are only preventable by not participating in destructive behavior, and it is far too late for that. 

Koschei anticipates her needs, digging into the pocket of her trousers and tossing a wrapped ginger candy across the room. 

“Won’t help the head, but it’ll settle the stomach.”

It bounces off of the back of a hand that still grips to the chair for dear life, and it takes a long moment for Theta to gather enough will to bend over and pick it up. Ginger hits the back of her tongue with a snap, and through the fog that permeates her mind, Theta wonders if he always carries an assortment of sweets with him. It would certainly explain the peppermint that always seems to cling to his breath, however, she cannot discount the fact that he must have known she would have a rough morning. Though he did not raise a hand to stop her, she does not doubt that he counted her drinks and measured the sway in her step and the slur in her speech and braced himself accordingly in order to fend off anger or illness or further lapses in judgement.    
  
Mouth still working around the candy, she slowly circles around to the front of her chair and sinks into the cushions. She crosses one leg over the other, props an elbow on her knee, and holds her head upright as she stares at the screen behind Koschei. The right half of the screen is occupied by a familiar breakdown, situated in a gray rectangle.  
  


Theta Sigma Lungbarrow  
Victor of the 53rd Annual Hunger Games  
District 3  
14 Years Old  
18 Kills  
Electrocution*  
* _ achieved via a significant breach of rules, boundaries, and protocols  
  
_

The left half of the screen is filled with her face. She is fifteen years younger -- pale, dirty, haunted. Scrapes and bruises cover her face, the result of a burst of energy that had thrown her halfway across a clearing. A charred electrocution burn snakes up her arm, peeking out from beneath the collar of a shirt that hangs too loosely from her shoulders, the fresh imprint of the scar that marks her skin to this very day. She doesn’t remember when this photo was taken, but it is circulated often. This is how most people see her -- young, broken, fresh off of confronting death in its own domain. If the Gamemaker that year had not been so quick to deploy a medical task force, she probably would have died there, and the Capitol would not have had a winner to parade around in the vague names of hope and punishment. 

It’s been a while since Theta has regarded her old self properly. She normally recoils quickly, turning her eyes away and focusing on something --  _ anything _ \-- else, but the pounding in her head and the aching in her heart anchor her to the present. She is not swept away by the tide of trauma; she simply looks and studies, and for the first time in a long time, dares to wonder why she was allowed to survive if they were going to put a permanent asterisk beside her name. 

Seconds tick by, and she is conscious of the fact that Koschei has failed to continue the lesson. Green eyes flick to him, and she catches him staring at her, mouth slightly parted in surprise and confusion. Whether by accident or on purpose, the mask falls away for a few valuable seconds. 

Theta does not venture a guess at the cause. 

“I thought you were teaching. You can talk with me here, you know. I might even help. Never know.” Due to the headache that still nags at her, the quips lack their usual energy, but they still manage to slot into the familiar fragmented cadence, running forward and stepping backward and covering all the bases while barely committing to any of them. 

Koschei sucks on his teeth for a second-long thought before spinning back towards the pair of tributes. “Right. The list.”

With the remote in his right hand, he idly cycles through faces, names and bullet points, barely allowing time for the descriptions to be read before soldiering onto the next entry. 

“Electrocution, strangulation, poisoning ...”

Sparrow raises a hand to interrupt. Koschei ignores him.   
  
“Blunt force trauma again, and again, and a third time.”   
  
The boy gathers enough nerve to speak his question without waiting for permission. “Why does Theta’s have a disclaimer on it?”

Theta’s eyes slide sideways, noting the eagerness in his posture and the hunger that glints in the back of his too-young gaze. She did not care for him on the train, and she does not particularly care for him now. She was much the same when she was wrestled into his position. Combative, but actively seeking out knowledge and solutions until she could claw her way out. It may have saved her life, but it did not serve her well. She made very, very poor decisions, and she lives and breathes beneath their too-long shadow. 

“Because it is no longer possible to win the Games in the manner that dear Theta won them,” Koschei answers, a hint of glee infiltrating his previously bored tone. “Theta entered the Arena, looked around, and creatively weaponized it in her favor. You can try it, but they have since covered off the possibility of replicating her particular feat. You would, perhaps, be better suited to emulate another victor’s strategy.”

Rennette’s gentle voice enters the fray. “Didn’t she hack the trees?”

Koschei readies himself to answer, but before words have a chance to leave his tongue, Theta speaks on her own behalf. 

“No.”

It has been years since she acknowledged her own victory and engaged in the details of it. Every year prior, she dodged such questions without fail, often leaving the room entirely to avoid being dragged into unwanted discussions, but she is both tired and already in pain. “I rewired them. They were already linked in order to host cameras and manipulate the outcome, I just … helped them along a bit. By the time someone in headquarters caught on, it was too late to stop it. Don’t waste your time on that. Find shelter and water. A weapon if you can. Conserve your energy as long as possible. The Games are long. Even when they’re short, they’re long. Time moves differently when you’re dying, and every single person in that Arena is dying.”

The scar beneath her sleeves tingles with the echoes of searing pain, and her eyes turn towards the ceiling, seeking to scare off tears and avoid whatever pointed looks Koschei may throw in her direction. 

Questions die away, and Koschei shakes his head to clear it before continuing down the list. 

Theta participates every so often, filling in gaps and supplying important facts when Koschei’s attention drifts away from him. They have done this over a dozen times before, and though their personal circumstances have changed, the basic facts of their job have not. They do what they can to prepare young people to enter a hostile environment and fight tooth and nail for survival, offering up false hope and illusions of guidance that will not matter when adrenaline rushes in and fate takes the reins. Barring instances of exceptional talent, both the fellow competitors and the Gamemakers determine who lives and who dies. Theta was exceptional, Koschei was exceptional, but every other tribute from District 3 was subject to the mercy of others, and Sparrow and Rennette are unlikely to replicate their success.

Time ticks by, they accomplish very little, and eventually, Romana sweeps in to take the children away, herding them out the door so that they might take a car to the official training facility. 

Koschei and Theta are left alone. 

Theta does not rise from the chair, but she drops both of her feet to the floor, bracing her elbows on the inside of her knees and burying her head in her hands. Through her parted fingers, she sees Koschei shove his hands in his pockets and lean back against a wall, head tilted upwards and eyes searched the ceiling.    
  
“Why doesn’t this ever get easier?” Theta asks after a lengthy silence, words slightly muffled by her palms. 

“Why would you expect it to? It is the same job. Same stakes. Same Games. Year in and year out, we do the same thing over and over and nothing ever changes. We’re the only ones who ride the train home, and then we turn around and do it again.” Rage simmers in Koschei’s words, and his tongue bites against the back of his teeth with unbridled force. “Could be better organized. I have  _ thoughts _ .”

“Do your notes include ending the Games? Mine do. Only item on there, actually. Seems more important than anything else.” As she speaks, her middle fingers move in gentle circles against her temples, futilely seeking to balance out the throbbing pressure that threatens to burst from her skull with every beat of her heart. It has abated slightly, but it is still terribly distracting.    
  
“There’s a lot on my plate,” he says cryptically, keeping his face turned pointedly away from hers. 

“I’m helping.”   
  
He tilts his head and lifts his shoulder in a lopsided shrug. “You’re nursing a hangover; that’s hardly the same thing.” 

Hands fall away as her gaze bores into him. “I spoke about my Games. I stayed. I answered their questions. You’re very,  _ very _ welcome.” Her upper lip curls in a slight sneer as she leans back in the chair, crossing her arms over her chest and awaiting whatever argument might be forthcoming.    


None comes. Instead, Koschei speaks with chilled ambivalence. “You hopped a bar buried six feet below the ground. Forgive me if I don’t applaud.”

“Three days ago you were  _ begging _ for my cooperation.”

“Three days ago you considered jumping off of a roof to spite me.” 

“I was okay with falling off the roof. That’s not the same thing.” Theta corrects, leaning into the explanation as if it is expected to mean something earth-shattering to a man who already witnessed the event in question.   
  
“Isn’t it?”

Their voices creep ever louder until they are shouting at each other from their chosen positions in the room. Theta’s head still hurts with every word, but the pain is less important than her desperate need to be heard. 

“It’s not easy, you know. Being here. Facing down the very people who I resolved to fight against the moment I woke up on that stretcher and realized what I did. Staring out at a crowd and trying to convince them that I love a man who  _ left me alone in a death match because he decided that I was less important than his best friend _ .” Tears gather at the corners of her eyes and her voice breaks, torn to shreds by grief and exhaustion and fifteen years of unspoken fears. 

Koschei’s face hardens into something unreadable. “I was going to help, after he was gone. I needed  _ time _ . You ended the Games before I had a chance.”

“Oh, please. Who’s going to believe that? Is that why you ignored me at every event for a decade and a half? Kicked me out of parties? Screamed in my face about all the ways in which I ruined your life?” She isn’t entirely sure when she rose from the chair, but as soon as her feet are under her, she rushes across the room, ignoring his personal boundaries and closing the space between them. For a brief moment, her vision swims and nausea rises in her belly, but she braces herself with a palm against the wall next to his head, and rage wrestles her dehydrated body back into unwilling submission. “You don’t get to pretend like you were innocent in this. You never planned to help me. You hate me. I know it. You know it. There’s no point pretending that it’s anything else.”   
  
Brown eyes meet hers, glistening with either anger or tears. His voice is perilously quiet as he replies, “You’re right. I do hate you.”

A rush of air floods Theta’s nose as satisfaction fills her lungs and arms her tongue with a smug remark. She never gets the chance to say it.    
  
Koschei’s hands move to straighten his waistcoat, as casually as if there was not a blonde hurricane looming large in his personal space. “Yet, for some reason unbeknownst to me, I love you, and trust me, you would not  _ believe _ how much I hate myself for that.”

“Liar!” The word roars, wrath and fear overwhelming thought and physical sensation, narrowing her world to a blazing red pinprick of light. “I know what love feels like. It isn’t this. It could  _ never _ be this.”    
  
In her mind, love is sacred, innocent, untouchable. It speaks to a world before she was conscripted to kill or be killed, comforting talks by the fire, people that would never dare to do the vile things that the man standing before her has done, a sense of home in a world that denied it from her. She does not know what this is, but it can’t be love. It can never be love. She’s too broken, too tainted, too monstrous for love to ever touch her again. After all, she barely tolerates herself. 

Koschei’s eyebrows lift. “Can’t it? Life is complicated, Theta, and every inch of it is cruel. Now -- if you’d excuse me.” 

Moving almost delicately, he slips out from under her arm. His shoe squeaks as he pivots to face her, walking jauntily backwards as he glances at his watch. “I have a meeting. We’ll discuss this later. When you’re feeling better.”

“ _ Koschei! _ ”

Theta’s voice swells and breaks with pain and anger. Koschei ignores the call, closing the door behind him with a decisive snap, leaving her alone with her racing heart and the lingering effects of the hangover. 


	14. Chapter 14

When Koschei finally returns, the world is draped in a fog and darkness so thick that only the grim, fluorescent screens and signs on the streets below provide light. However, even those are muffled, reduced to half-glimpsed horrors lurking within the meaningless landscape of black and gray. Theta observes the nothingness from her position at the bedroom window -- pressing her forehead against the glass and desperately seeking out meaning in the madness. She’s tired. So overwhelmingly tired, in fact, that she doesn’t know what to do with herself. Since Koschei’s little revelation in the parlor, the world has continued to spin, but Theta feels as if it has left her behind. She is a single moon thrown out of orbit, wobbling on its unsteady axis. So far today, she has wandered hallways, spoken at length to herself within the private confines of a bathroom, and disassembled and reassembled a security camera installed beside the front door three separate times. None of those things resolved the ache in her heart or quieted the frantic racing of her mind. She is still ripped to shreds, torn open, actively bleeding.

The door slides open, and Theta screws her eyes shut, pressing her face even more firmly into the unforgiving chill of the plate glass. She doesn’t want to see him, doesn’t want to hear his voice, doesn’t want to confront the inevitable. Earlier, Koschei claimed that every inch of life was cruel, and in this moment, she cannot help but agree. Her dread is imminent, omnipresent, suffocating. She breathes and thinks of nothing else, and even the fog slinking against the opposite side of the window seems to reflect the sentiment.

“You didn’t turn the lights on,” Koschei observes.    
  
Theta feels his presence at her side, but she does not open her eyes. Tension threads every muscle in her body, pulled so tightly that she starts to doubt that she will ever be able to move again. It is not the darkest thought to pass through her mind in the past several days; there are far worse fates than wasting away in front of a window with the world at her feet and her back to an enemy and she's considered them all.    
  
It takes her a minute to grasp the concept of language. Things have a tendency of slipping away from her when she’s upset, especially when her mind is somewhere else, somewhere outside of herself, somewhere other. Finally, after a pause so long that it seems like it might never end, she answers, “I didn’t want them.”

“Your head?”   
  
“Heart. Liver. Lungs. A nagging ache in my ring finger. Bruise on my knee that came out of nowhere. Itch behind my ear. Can’t seem to keep track of it all anymore. Is this what getting old feels like?” 

There is no point in lying -- in throwing up these little distractions in the vain, naive hope that he will believe them -- but she tries anyway. It's an old habit, and in unfamiliar territory, old habits are all she has. They impose order on an unforgiving landscape, offer guidance to the otherwise unguided, provide comfort where there is none. Lying is one of the oldest magic tricks in the book, however, such feats of sleight of hand only work on the uninitiated, and Koschei is a master of the art.   
  
“That bad, is it?” Insincere pity curls around the thought. “I’ll have you know, there are hundreds of people who would have killed to hear what you heard.” The words snap and bend, mounting a defense against whatever attacks might be forthcoming. He needn’t bother. She is too tired to stage a war. In fact, she’s barely interested in listening to him. Were it not for the dead silence of the room and the world beyond it, she would have blocked out his voice altogether in favor of focusing on the buzz of a fan or a muttered conversation in an adjoining room. How unfortunate that there is nothing but racing hearts and dulcet tones and the rush of blood through her veins.    
  
Disdain lifts her upper lip in a disapproving sneer, whetting her words into a sharply mocking edge. “Yes, there is nothing more flattering than being told that you are hated and loved in the same breath. I’m clearly the misguided one here.  _ My bad _ .” 

His shoulders lift in a shrug, marked by the sound of layered fabrics rubbing together. “What can I say? Most people just appreciate being thought of. After all, there has been a devastating shortage of thought among the common people lately. There must be something in the water.”   
  
Theta cracks her eyes open, fixing on the ghost of his reflection in the glass with narrowed eyes. He has not changed as much as she has in the gap between their shared present and their separate Games. Perhaps it is because he was older than she was when he won -- seventeen years compared to her measly fourteen -- or perhaps it is because time has not taken its toll on him in the same way. She glimpses age and exhaustion in his eyes sometimes -- in the sadness that wells to the surface when she presses on a pain point -- but it does not ooze from his every pore in the way that it does hers. He is older, but he feels younger. She wonders how much of it is an act and how much of it is real.

“I’ve been thought of more than I’d like, if I’m honest. I’m ready to be forgotten. A little footnote in the universe, that’s me. Or at least, it should be.”   
  
It is all she would have been if the odds fell in her favor. Her name would have never been pulled. Rose Tyler would have never died. She would be tired and hungry and fighting, but she would be happy and content and thought of by no one but her loved ones. That fate would have suited her just fine, but she was denied it. Instead, she has  _ this, _ and  _ oh, _ how she hates it. 

"With a mind like yours, you would've become something whether you liked it or not."

" _ Nah _ , I've met loads of people with minds like mine. They work on factory floors and shove square pegs into round holes all day long in complete obscurity. Would've been me, too, if they let me. Was me for a while, before my name was pulled. Very good at wiring receptors, me. Do it on weekends sometimes, and on the occasional Tuesday morning when I get bored."

With a quiet sigh, Koschei leans into the window, propping himself up with a closed fist. His opposite hand finds his pocket. "It doesn't get any more likely to break the longer you stand here, you know. They made these things shatterproof after the 31st Annual Games."    
  
A fleeting frown creases Theta’s face, but she says nothing.   
  
A shrug lifts Koschei’s shoulders as he pulls away, turning dramatically before he sits on the bed behind her and continues, "I'm surprised it took that long for there to be a pre-Games murder. More surprised it didn't happen with a dinner knife, but that's children for you. They always forget the most obvious weapons. Can't say shoving someone out a window isn't good drama, though. Glass everywhere. Very chic."

Theta breathes out a single, quivering warning. "Don't." 

“Don’t what, dear? Speak? Exist? Dare to challenge a worldview that is questionable at best?” Each question is punctuated with a tap of his hand against the empty air, almost as if he is conducting an invisible orchestra. She sees the shadow of the movement in the glass, and it grates against her already raw nerves. He is theatrical. Everything about him centers around performance, and she feels like a puppet, used and manipulated for his own gain.

“You don’t get to decide what’s best for me.”   
  
“Why not? Nothing you’ve been doing is working.”

A wave of anger breaks across Theta’s body as she finally shoves herself away from the window, whirling around to face him. Wrath shines in her eyes and sneaks into her voice, pushing the volume upward until she is perilously close to shouting at him. “I survived for years without your help. May not have wanted to all the time, but I managed to get through it anyway. You don’t get to sweep in at the last second and take credit for fighting  _ my _ battles just because someone planted a ring in your pocket and a thought in your mind. My life is mine and mine alone, and it will never,  _ ever _ be yours.” 

Her lungs are spent, her chest heaves, and she fights for breath and reason and calm amidst the roiling fury. 

Koschei leans back, beaming up at her with a cheshire grin that is at once smug, taunting, and utterly infuriating. “Careful, love,” he purrs. “You could raze a city with that fire.”

With a lunge, Theta invades his space again. She leans over him, bracing her palms on either side of him, her rage butting up against his calm in the perilously scant air that remains between them. It occurs to her that this has become her default response whenever he slips a knife beneath the surface of her skin and tests its depth, but she shoves the observation aside, resolving to come back to it when her mind is free from the unrelenting grip of her emotions.    
  
“I’ll raze you in a minute,” she snaps back without bothering to wonder whether or not the threat makes sense.   
  
“Oh, I would _love_ to see you try.” With great care, Koschei untangles his right arm from hers, checking his watch for no particular reason aside from signaling his own calm. “Do let me know when you’re done with whatever this little outburst is so that we can have our chat.”   
  
“We are chatting.”   
  
“I’m chatting; you’re shouting. Invigorating, but not very helpful, is it?” He raises his eyebrows ever so slightly as he fixes his gaze on hers. “I take it that my earlier announcement bothered you. If it is any consolation, you’re hardly a pleasant person to love. I’d be better off trying to fend off a bear with nothing but my fists. At least they’re cute, bears, or I’ve heard that they are. Never actually seen one in person. Have you?”

Theta’s brow furrows, digging a deep trench above her nose. He’s mirroring her, borrowing her speech patterns, manipulating her into calming down enough to play whatever game he’s laid before them. With great hesitation, she draws back from him with a deep, shaking breath and circles around to the opposite corner of the bed. She perches on the very edge -- as far from him as she can possibly be -- and crosses her legs under her. It’s so dark in the room that she can barely see him at this distance, and that is fine by her. It helps her fool herself into forgetting that he is watching her long enough for her to find her center and quiet the flames that threaten to devour her alive.

After a few moments of shaking silence, she manages to draw her anger to a consistent simmer. “Fine. Let’s chat.”

Koschei’s head tilts as he regards her, scant light from outside the misted windows gilding the angles of his face. A creature of shadows and darkness and the only faintest glimmers of something else floating among them. “Are you afraid of me, Theta?”

“No.” Theta chooses not to elaborate on her answer, but that makes it no less true. She fears herself more than she could ever fear anyone else, and when she looks at him, she sees glimpses of herself reflected back at her, twisted and morphed and monstrous. In him, she sees that which she could be if she ever made peace with her history, and doing so would mean sacrificing the last of her self-worth. Her mind is inextricably tangled in a moral high ground that doesn’t actually exist, however, that moral high ground is the only thing that fuels her. It pushes her forward and keeps her fighting. Without it, she would waste away on a rooftop somewhere, dreaming of stars and the great void that lies beyond this world. 

Before Koschei has a chance to speak again, Theta returns the question. “Are you afraid of me?”

The grin resurfaces. Horribly wide. Achingly feral. “Yes. And no. Both at the same time. You’re blinding, you know that? You walk into a room and it’s like there’s no one else there, and you don’t even mean to do it. Why do you think the President constantly hesitates to kill you?” 

Her protestation is immediate. “That’s not true.”   
  
“It is. Forgive my choice of words, but you are  _ electric _ . It’s captivating, and I mean that as honestly as jealousy will let me. Desperately wish I could steal it for myself, but I’ve managed to carve my own way. Underhanded trick here, back alley deal there, I’ve made out just fine, but imagine how unstoppable we could be together. I’d tear this whole place down for you and rebuild it in our image. Whatever you want. Name your price.”   
  
Theta can feel her heartbeat fluttering frantically against the swell of her throat as she attempts to swallow back the bitterness that coats her tongue. “You’re manipulating me.” He has to be. To her, there can be no other alternative, no possible way to reconcile the stark difference between the way that he claims to see them and the way that she sees them. They stand on opposite sides of a bottomless ravine with no clear way across, barely able to hear the other’s shouted cries for help. 

A shrug lifts Koschei’s shoulders as he turns ever so slightly. The last of the muted light from the window flees his face, robbing it of all expression. Theta is conversing with a shadow -- slippery and insubstantial. “Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Truths can be just as powerful as even the most insidious lie.”

“How do I know that?” Her tongue feels dry and sluggish. Thoughts are hard to come by and difficult to shape into coherent sentences. In a word, she is overwhelmed, and she wants nothing more than to forego conscious thought for a while and slip into the arms of sleep. Within the relatively safe confines of her dreams, her mind will be able to sort through all of this -- deciding what is important, flagging that which remains suspicious, and foregoing the rest entirely.    
  
“I suppose you’re just going to have to trust me. Take all the time you want. I’ve thought about this for fifteen years; it isn't as though there's any need to rush. The world outside has no chance of changing anytime soon.”    
  
He stands, crossing towards the dark corner where the door to the bathroom stands. He sets his hand on the panel, but then struck with a sudden thought, he pivots, turning back towards Theta. 

“One last thing -- can I have half of the bed? You would not  _ believe _ how much my back is killing me. Haven’t felt this awful in years.”   
  
Theta’s eyes turn towards the ceiling as she considers the request, and after a painstakingly long moment, she nods. 

“Fine,” she says, although she doesn’t feel fine at all.

There's a good chance that she might never feel fine again.


	15. Chapter 15

Theta despises the training facility.

It’s stark grey, built almost entirely of steel and concrete, and full to the brim with weapons and fear and terrible memories. Each team gets allocated time in the mornings to teach without interruption before the tributes get swept into collective training in the afternoon, and Theta is counting down the minutes until relative freedom with even more frenetic desperation than usual. She is so exhausted that she is half-tempted to curl up on a padded mat and take a nap. 

Though he managed to mostly stay on his own side of the bed the previous night, there was a single moment when Koschei kicked her in his sleep, leaving a swollen and mottled bruise on her ribcage and robbing her of a couple valuable hours of sleep, a commodity that was already difficult to come by given her racing mind and constant worry. In retaliation, she stole a set of his clothes to wear for the day. A black waistcoat that glows like dying embers along the seams sits over a slightly wrinkled white collared shirt. She cinched the trousers with a belt of her own that shimmers orange in the light. Their builds differ, but their heights are matched, so all in all, it is not the most impractical ensemble that she has donned since their arrival in the Capitol. 

Koschei has not commented on her light thievery, but she has noticed his eyes lingering on her in intervening moments throughout the morning. She hopes that he is annoyed, however, claims of love have rewritten the landscape. She doesn’t know how that twists and alters his perception, or how it affects her own. It seems like she should feel something in direct response -- fire and rage and hatred -- but when she reaches into her heart, there is nothing but hollow uncertainty. She doesn’t know what it means or what to do with it, so she elects to ignore feelings altogether.

She lurks several steps behind the group as they walk through the building, partially out of tiredness, and partially to dodge Koschei’s wandering eyes. It is enough to know that she has gotten under his skin; she doesn’t have to witness it.

Conversation and instruction buzz somewhere slightly outside of her perception as she stands apart from the group, hands finding trouser pockets that are both slightly lower and slightly further back than she is used to. She has heard Koschei’s spiel a dozen times before, so she need only be alert for keywords and phrases that signal that she ought to jump in and make a floundering attempt to help. Between the strangeness of her own experience in the Games and her general moral refusal to engage in certain hypotheticals, she is minimally helpful at best and actively combative at worst. He rarely appeals to her expertise.   
  
Or, at least, he rarely acknowledged her  _ before _ their engagement. Things have changed now. His attention flits to her at the worst possible times -- moments of panic and vulnerability and rage so all-consuming that she knows little else. 

“Theta.” 

The name draws her mind back to the immediate reality, and her eyes dash to Koschei's, overlooking the two children that stand on either side of him. “What?”

“Catch,” Koschei says, grabbing a weighted training sword from the rack and tossing it in her direction.    
  
Keeping her hands tightly clasped behind her back, Theta delicately sidesteps the projectile, allowing it to clatter to the floor behind her. 

“Rather not, thanks,” she replies dryly, wrinkled nose broadcasting the extremity of her distaste. She agreed to be present. That is the extent of it, and should she feel struck with sudden inspiration to help, she will do so in a way that does not require picking up a training weapon and engaging in whatever demonstrations or exercises Koschei sees fit to run. 

During her own Games experience, she did not even bother picking up weapons in training aside from one instance when she was goaded into entering a knife fight, and when it came time to present her skills to the panel of Gamemakers meant to pass judgement and rate her deadliness on a scale of one to twelve, she had stood on top of a toppled box and shouted at them. Generously, they gave her a three, the lowest score that a victor has ever been rated. Threes are typically for the youngest members of the field, the ones who cannot run, can barely lift a club, and have no chance of holding their own in hand-to-hand combat. Threes are doomed to die before the first night falls. That day, however, she learned that threes are also for those who refuse to play by the rules.    
  
His year, Koschei received a ten. Ratings happen behind closed doors, cameras are barred from the premises, and she has never bothered to ask what he did; however, given the physicality of his kills, she can hazard a guess that it was appropriately  _ brutal _ . 

Her rejection rolls off of Koschei’s shoulders alongside a slight shrug. “Suit yourself.” 

He seems unsurprised to a degree that makes her wonder why he tried in the first place. Maybe he’s noticed her unsteadiness, the recent deviations in behavior, her sudden willingness to tolerate familiar stressors in the hopes of drowning out the new ones, and decided to see how far those boundaries are willing to bend. 

Koschei returns his attention to the two tributes, directing them to pick up their own swords, and Theta elects to ignore all three of them. She circles around the floor with her hands in her pockets, looking up at the rafters. Their current tribute field is a puzzle. Sparrow might be able to slot himself into the Games in the traditional way, fighting tooth and claw for his survival, but Rennette is  _ tiny _ . Too young for fistfights in the schoolyard, too small to face any of the older tributes with even middling success. Yasmin Khan is living proof that you don’t need to pick up a weapon in order to win the Games, and she can’t help but wonder if their attention might be better directed elsewhere. Thirty percent of tributes die of exposure and another 20% fall victim to accidents, and there are a handful of basic skills that might prevent that from happening. Most of those are taught in their basic training classes -- poisonous plants, fire building, water sterilization -- but a couple useful things get overlooked in the assumption that all of the children already know them. 

The clatter of dueling weapons echoes through the building as her eyes fix on a net that spans half of the room.    
  
She spins on a booted foot, blonde hair sweeping the tops of her shoulders. “Rennette, can you climb?”   
  
The faux fighting stops. Though she avoids Koschei’s direct gaze, she sees him shift slightly, chin raising with mild interest, clearly redrawing the rules of combat in his head. Weapons are a step too far, but after years of only passively engaging with an endless stream of tributes, she is taking the initiative to help. Koschei can overthink it as much as he wants, but so far as she sees it, it is a welcome distraction from the other problems that plague her present. Teaching someone how to survive in impossible circumstances is far simpler than dwelling on Koschei’s declarations, and in focusing on nonviolent tasks, she can do so without flirting with her own moral code and the pain and guilt that define it. 

And besides, she wants to do her best to help this little girl face down impossible odds and win.    
  
The gentle voice breaks the tense silence. “I can learn.” 

Sparrow, clearly enraged at being excluded, raises his voice to such a degree that it echoes. "Why not me?"

Theta’s flick over to him, full to the brim with scathing judgement. It's the first thing that she's felt all day aside from exhaustion, and she latches onto it with desperate vigor. Though she acknowledges that the boy is also a victim of this system and that his grating enthusiasm is simply another survival tactic, she doesn’t particularly care for it. Perhaps under different circumstances -- if she was martialling the slow dismantling of the system -- he might have been useful, but in their current state, he is better in Koschei’s care so that that energy can be honed into something useful, instead of something dangerous. "You're busy, and you're not eleven. You can hold your own in a fight if you want to. Not everyone can. Teach yourself how to climb on your own time, or maybe Rennette will show you later.”

A dark chuckle spins from Koschei’s lungs, and she seeks him out with a stare that dares to broadcast an endless stream of accusations. He meets it with a wink of amusement, which only serves to further deepen her anger.

“Come on then," Theta says quickly, breaking the contact with Koschei and gesturing in Rennette's general direction. 

"The important thing about climbing," she starts, barely waiting long enough for the girl to catch up, "Is that you always want at least two points of contact with whatever surface you're scaling. Three if you can, but two will do in a pinch. Statistics says that you'll probably be around trees, but the Gamemakers have been known to mix things up once in a while. You could have cliffs or ruins or mountains, and knowing how to climb will be your first step in finding a safe place after the initial rush. Do you understand that?" 

She glances down and sideways, and Rennette nods, curls bouncing. 

"Good. Beyond that, the only way to learn is by doing." 

She reaches an arm up and out, only to find her movement constricted by the stolen shirt. The material is starched and unforgiving, and refuses to provide the give that she needs to move. For a brief second, she is tempted to ignore the problem in the same way that she ignores so many other things in her life, but she refuses to give Koschei the satisfaction of seeing her fall from only a handful of feet off the ground. 

After a moment of hesitation and a nervous swipe of her tongue across her lips, she rolls up her sleeves. The chilled, sterile air of the room brushes across her exposed scar, sending a shiver through her entire body. Vulnerability is the price that must be paid for mobility. Her fingers fumble with the buttons, but eventually, rolled cuffs are secured past her elbows, and she is free to move again. 

The clamor of combat briefly halts, and she does not dare glance over her shoulder to see if Koschei is watching her. 

"We'll go together. You start, and I'll be right behind. If you need anything, ask and I'll guide you, but whatever you do, don't look down."

  
  
  
  


It takes about twenty minutes for the pair to reach the rafters. Once there, Theta pulls herself up and then extends a hand to Rennette. Here, the lesson becomes one of footing and balance, of testing weight and distance before commiting to a step. This roof is safe, but a treetop canopy or a rusted ceiling is not, and Theta is careful to verbalize the difference as best she can, though she wishes that the learning environment was grungier, dirtier, more akin to what the children will see when they are finally thrown into the hostility of the Arena. 

Wherever it is and whatever it may contain, it will not look like this. 

Eventually, she runs out of cars in her train of thought, and she lapses into a forgetful, awkward silence, ended only by a thought. There was one thing she wanted back when she was in Rennette's position, a series of questions no one bothered to ask her. In retrospect, perhaps she should have done this fourteen years earlier, when she first began mentoring tributes, but better late than never. 

"Go on. Take a seat. Get comfy. I want to talk where they can't hear us." 

It takes Rennette a moment to find a place where she is comfortable, wrapping her arms around a crossbar and placing her back against another. Theta takes no such precautions, simply taking up position on a beam across from her, legs dangling over the edge. Death is a matter of inches and balance, but that's still just fine with her. She isn't actively seeking it out, but if it comes, it comes. 

Green eyes seek out brown ones. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." The answer is a slow whisper, laced with uncertainty

Theta sighs, turning her eyes skyward as she tugs at the place where the waistcoat cuts into fresh bruising. "Do you really mean it, or did an angry mob of raccoons tell you that that's what you're supposed to say?" Nerves flutter in her heart, but she does her best to keep them from leaking out. She is far from stable, but in this moment, she needs to pretend to be a rock, to adopt her best imitation of the mask that Koschei wears. 

At least she has a head start. She's already wearing his clothes.

A soft, sad smile breaks across the girl's face as she turns her eyes downward, shyly untangling one of her arms to reach down and pick at the laces on her shoes. "It doesn't feel real. I keep thinking that it's all a bad dream and that I'll wake up at home with my mom, but it's not, is it?" 

"No. No, it's not." A sigh whispers past her lips. She wants to lie and say that Rennette will make it home, wants to throw the doors wide and offer her a way out, but she knows that if she does, they will both be punished a dozen times over. 

"Thought so." The words fall to the ground below them like lead weights. It is a darker thought than any eleven year old ought to have, and it builds an insatiable itch beneath Theta's skin. She wants to help, in any way that she can, even if her influence is miniscule. 

"You have the same chance of getting out as anyone in that Arena, you know, no matter what the betting odds say. 1 in 24. Same as Sparrow, same as the Careers, same as what I had, and what Koschei had. It's not great, but it's enough for hope, yeah? So if you listen and you learn everything you can, you still might make it back home to your mom. I'll do my best to get you there." 

It's not a guarantee, but it's the closest to a promise that she has ever come. Despite the grim hollowness that she feels whenever her mind wanders towards his love, there is no denying that he has lit a fire in other ways.

She folds her legs back under her and stands up, backing further away from the edge. Today is not her day to die. She has a little girl to save. 

"It's as good a time as any to learn how to get down, yeah?" 

  
  
  


The descent takes three times as long as the ascent. Rennette's movements are careful and she second guesses every handhold and foothold. Theta's impatience simmers, but she manages to keep her tongue from snapping and at the girl’s side every painfully slow step of the way. Koschei and Sparrow are waiting for them when their feet finally touch the ground again. Koschei keeps his hands in his pockets, head tilted in extreme interest. Sparrow, on the other hand, looks positively livid. Theta doesn’t care. So far as she sees it, Sparrow is Koschei’s problem. Probably best not to pair the mentor known for uncontrollable rage with the tribute that treads perilously close to being equally destructive. 

“They’re kicking us out,” Koschei says, eyes wandering towards the collar of Theta’s stolen waistcoat. “I told them we’d send the tributes along towards the next room and you and I can be on our way.” 

“Fine. Good. Great.” Words and thoughts bump and jostle against each other, and she yanks her attention away from Koschei to address the pair of children. Instruction and advice, however haphazard it may be, gives her something to do other than be flustered.“Pay attention to the other tributes. Learn what they’re good at. Learn what they’re bad at. We’ll figure out how to deal with it.” 

The two pairs part ways, and almost as soon as Theta and Koschei reach the hallway, Koschei steers them into the privacy of a restroom. It is just as sterile, just as rarely frequented as the training facilities themselves. There is a decent chance that they are the first people to enter it in over a year, and the last people to see it for another.    
  
Silence hangs heavy between them, and their eyes meet for a long, tense moment before Koschei turns his back on Theta, washing his hands in the sink with a great deal of deliberateness. Slowly, Theta begins to inch back towards the door, but his eyes snap up towards her reflection in the mirror, fixing on it with paralyzing intensity. “Stay here.”   
  
Her tongue sweeps across her lips as she considers her options, green gaze flicking between his back and the door.    
  
“I mean it.” The command crackles with barely contained frustration.    
  
Theta takes a step backwards, leaning against the wall, eyeing him warily. She doesn’t know what new uncertainties might be hurled in her direction. She can’t read him in the way that he reads her, can’t seem to find the open-mindedness and the familiarity required to latch onto his patterns of behavior in the way that he has latched onto hers. He waits, strategizes, anticipates with moves and countermoves, and she improvisationally blunders her way through situations, deliberately choosing to remain blind to herself and to him. 

Koschei towels off his hands one finger a time as he closes the distance between them. Every movement is full of tension and intention. 

Ten slow steps and he is painfully close to her. It’s the first time that he has approached her within the context of a private moment since the elevator. In almost every other instance since then, Theta has been the one to insert herself into his space, compressing space of time into a matter of inches and seconds.    
  
She draws herself up slightly, refusing to shrink. 

“You wanted my attention, love? You have it.” Koschei’s voice drops perilously close to a growl, and he reaches out a hand, rubbing the fabric of the waistcoat’s lapel between his first two fingers. The color shifts beneath his touch, passing from black into orange and then back again. The feeble struggles of a dying star. “Is this a gesture of peace or the opening act in a war that I didn’t know we were fighting?”   
  
“I…” It takes Theta a moment to wrap her mind about how her passive aggression could possibly be construed as an act of peace, but when she finally gets there, her eyes go wide and she backpedals frantically, seeking to fill the air and her mind with unrelated thoughts. “You kicked me.”

Dark eyebrows raise as the fabric slips out of his fidgeting fingers. “When?”

“Last night.”

“Where?”    
  
Koschei’s hands fall, the tips of his fingers lightly tracing the lines of her torso. Theta winces when he hits the bruise, pain slipping through her teeth in quiet hiss. The touch falls away, hands returning to the safety of his own pockets.    
  
“In my defense, you sleep like a starfish. If you kept to your own side of the bed, I would have hit you in the shins.” The observation makes it halfway to a joke, but his heart doesn’t seem to be in it, and it falls short.    
  
A sharp inhale rips through his nose before he adds, “You’re not the only one with nightmares, Theta. Maybe you’d realize that if you stopped running away long enough to ask.”   
  
Theta says nothing. There is nothing worth saying. She is at once full of thoughts and completely devoid of them, and her racing heartbeat fills her ears with nagging anxiety. 

He awaits her reply for a moment so long that whole empires rise and fall somewhere on the other side of the world -- gaze full of pain and grief and a dash of hope. When it becomes clear that nothing is forthcoming, he leaves. The door closes behind him with a sharp slap of anger, and Theta sinks to the floor, eyes wet with tears that she does not understand and cannot justify. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since the training setup in the Hunger Games is constructed around a narrative about tributes, I've skewed its parameters to better accommodate a story about mentors/former victors. Don't come for me.


	16. Chapter 16

That night, Theta constructs a barrier of pillows and rolled blankets down the center of the bed. It doesn't help much. By morning, they've both breached it. When Koschei was relegated to the floor, it was easy to overlook his personal struggles. She did not notice a whisper of writhing limbs or garbled words. Now that they share a bed, however, his nightmares are written in the bruise on her side and the feet that touch by accident and sweat that dots their foreheads, reflecting the first light of the morning as it sneaks through the windows. Somewhere beneath that persona, he, too, wrestles with some of the same darkness that haunts the shadowy fringes of Theta’s mind. 

When they rise, they largely ignore each other aside from a couple brief, cursory exchanges of lies centered around how they both slept well. To say otherwise would require touching on the exchange of the previous day, and provided Koschei does not bring it up, Theta is more than content to let the conversation fade from her mind altogether. However, she doubts that it will. He has a habit of scribing himself indelibly into her memory. Every glance, every word, every touch lingers long past its rightful end.    
  
She wonders if it is the same for him. It must be, if he walks about speaking of love.    
  
Koschei insists on taking the tributes for the day while she remains behind. Theta isn’t entirely sure whether that is because he wants to minimize the time that they spend in a room together or because he doesn’t trust her derailments of a training regime that he has been refining for over a decade without her help. It seems likely that both variables are at play to some degree. She doesn’t blame him; she wouldn’t want to be trapped in a training room with herself either. 

Over breakfast at the kitchen counter, Theta attempts to discuss the rest of the week with Romana, who brushes her off with a callousness that she previously thought impossible. For a brief moment, she wonders what she might have done to deserve it, but ends up surfacing with a list of affronts so lengthy that she could not even begin to sort through them all for the truth. Though she means well and carries the best intentions, Theta is not always  _ kind _ . Kindness means looking out at a world that consistently treated her poorly and wishing the best for everyone else in it. It means relinquishing long-held grudges and reaching out hands to those who need her. It often means choosing the hard path over the easy one, and she consistently struggles with every one of those things.    
  
Eventually, Romana leaves to pursue her own set of errands, and Theta is left alone. With nothing better to do, Theta flips on the daily broadcast.    


Highlights from previous Games play out in sequence. Theta has seen some of them before, but not all of them. Every final kill of a victor, every moment of realization upon winning, every crowning. Koschei raises a knife to the throat of a girl who hangs so limply that she seems to have already passed into death and slashes it open before turning his face to the sky and letting out a resounding yell of mad triumph. He grins as the President sets the laurels upon his head, keeping his hands tightly clasped behind his back in a reserved gesture that has always struck her as odd.    
  
Her own face follows. They don’t show her kills, but they do show her flying across the clearing and lying scraped and charred on the rocky ground and a team working to airlift her out. How is she supposed to find peace with her actions when even the brutal minds that populate the Capitol are too fearful to laud her victory?   
  
Fifteen more victors follow. She averts her eyes during the more gruesome kills. There are some moments that she refuses to bear witness to, even now that they are long past.   
  
After a time, it cuts away. Caesar Flickerman’s face takes up the entirety of the screen, raised eyebrows and mischievous grin heralding horrors. Most people who live in the Capitol revere him, look forward to his broadcasts and his investment in the watered down goings-on in Panem, but the outlying districts have a much more comprehensive view of the world and the crimes that he commits by obscuring the truth. It is unfortunate that she is no longer in a position where she can be allowed to challenge and antagonize him. She must play nice for both her own sake and Koschei’s.    
  
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have heard reports from a  _ very _ good source that our new favorite couple will be joining us during this year’s Tribute Interviews to offer their own retrospective about their experience in the Hunger Games. Isn’t that a treat?”   
  
Bristling with anger, Theta turns it off again. If she and Koschei are meant to make yet another media appearance, it’s news to her. She can’t help but wonder if that was the meeting that Koschei ran off to after declaring love a couple of days ago. She has no idea when he planned to tell her about these plans, or if he intended to broadside her with the news five minutes before the interviews were set to start. She adds it to a very, very long list of subjects that she intends to interrogate him about the next time he is receptive to her existence. She doesn’t expect to get to it anytime soon. There’s a lot on her mind.    
  
The front door cracks open, and a redheaded stylist sweeps through it with a bright, “Good morning. Wasn’t expecting to see you here.”   
  
Amy has garment bags grasped in one hand and a box in the other, no doubt clothes that either needed dropping off or alterations. These two weeks are the stylist's busiest weeks of the year. Tribute costumes make or break entire careers; it is the one time when absolutely everyone is paying attention to  _ who _ everyone is wearing instead of what they are wearing. It doesn’t matter how many parties and interviews Koschei and Theta frequent in Amy’s designs, the tributes are the only things that truly matter.    
  
“Morning.” Theta returns the greeting with much less enthusiasm, fingers restlessly fidgeting with the remote in her hands. She isn't prepared for company. 

“You look tired,” Amy comments as she breezes through the apartment.“Long night?” Lips quirk and her eyebrows raise in a very clear suggestion.    
  
“You look nosy, I wasn’t going to mention.” Her tongue sits poised on the back of her teeth as she considers a great number of follow-up observations before settling on a grouchy, “Romana seems angry with me.”    
  
Amy leans against the counter, dropping the box and shifting her armful of clothes to pluck a single strawberry from the bowl on the counter, popping it into her mouth with no small amount of relish. When she finishes swallowing, she raises her eyebrows. “With that mouth of yours? ‘Course she is. Or, y’know, she’s mad that you’re bonding with Koschei and she’s left out in the cold. She looks forward to seeing you two. It’s the only thing that keeps her going, since they denied her a transfer. No one wants to be stuck in a dead end job shepherding kids to their deaths and pretending to be okay with it. Romana just... hides it better than you do. Not better than Koschei, mind -- man’s a genius at projecting -- but better than you.”   
  
“Can’t exactly fix the fact that I’m engaged,” Theta grumbles under her breath, turning her eyes towards the ceiling. If she could shed the ring, she would do so in a heartbeat. Or, at least, she  _ would have  _ done it in a heartbeat. Recent events have shadowed the moment with the slightest bit of hesitation, even when considered in entirely hypothetical terms. Outside of the immediate threat of execution that exists in their very, very specific circumstances, ending a relationship that is devoid of love has few consequences. Ending a relationship where love is involved, however, even on a single side, creates ripples. 

Painted fingernails root through the bowl as Amy swipes yet another berry from the horde. “No, but you could stand to be a bit nicer, yeah? Not everyone’s willing to suffer through your mess long enough to figure out that your heart’s in the right place.” A ghost of a shrug lifts her shoulders, sending copper hair cascading down her back. “Well, most of the time, anyways. Everyone’s got their  _ moments _ .”    
  
Theta inhales sharply through her nose, settling against the counter with crossed arms and an expression that suggests that this particular conversation is  _ over _ . She’s faced a great deal of criticism from Koschei in the past handful of days. The last thing she needs is Amy Pond piling her grievances on top of it. “Did you hear anything about Koschei and I and tribute interviews?”    
  
It is an indelicate subject change, but effective nonetheless.

Amy arches a single brow. “Yeah. Koschei asked me to design for it. Why?”    
  
“He didn’t tell me.” The familiar anger returns, growling beneath the surface of Theta’s skin. She is tired of Koschei being the one who decides what’s best for them, tired of being shoved around like a pawn in someone else’s game, tired of suffering beneath his refusal to trust her. He can offer her the world all he wants, but why should she have faith in promises if he continues to scatter the ashes of uncertainty in his wake? If he cannot extend his trust her, then she refuses to even _consider_ trusting him. 

“Don’t look at me like I’m responsible for your marriage issues. I’ve already got my own,” Amy says as she gathers up the box and sets off down the hall.    
  
The stylist returns a moment later, newly freed hands perched in the pockets of her jacket as her face works its way through a formidable range of pensive expressions. “I think you should talk to him, but I’ll tell you if any other appointments trickle down to me. I know what you get like when you’re caught unawares. Wouldn’t want anyone to get a black eye before the Games even start.” She smiles at the final thought, but happiness never quite manages to reach her eyes.    
  
“Really trying not to fight anyone these days.” A resolution that has gotten increasingly more difficult, given her tendency to want to fly at Koschei whenever he dares to say something infuriating, which is always. However, unless something dramatically changes in the days and weeks and years to come, she intends to stick by it. The ghosts of her kills already haunt her nightmares and her flashbacks. No matter how satisfying it might be in the moment, she does not wish to add to their ranks. She agreed to this arrangement to keep him safe and her conscience stable, and she would be a fool to forget that. 

A pause precedes a rushed and almost forgotten, “But thank you.”   
  
“Don’t mention it.” Amy casts the thought over her shoulder on her way out the door, and once it closes, Theta is once again left dangerously alone.    
  
In the vain hope of distraction, Theta fixes the water pressure in the shower and reprograms the wall of monitors to reflect the grey landscape of her home. Industrial ruins and faded tenant buildings are far from cozy, but she pines for the simplicity of her life there and the freedom that was so recently snatched from her hands. 

By the time Koschei returns, the world is cloaked in night and she is already asleep, sprawled across the bed without half a thought placed to diving beneath the covers. She wakes only when he carefully picks up her arm and then her leg, moving them out of his territory, and even then, she does not bother to open her eyes. Sleep pulls her back into its grasp a few minutes later, so quickly that the memory of being gently moved barely registers as real.    
  
Her dreams are haunted by flashes of light and the scent of burning flesh and the electric taste of metal in her mouth, her darkest moment played out over and over again in her memories. It never gets any easier, but she stopped screaming years ago. Now, she suffers alone and in silence, shouldering the hope that she might one day be allowed to sleep without experiencing her personal horror on repeat.    
  
  
  
A hand that is not her own finds her face and she wakes in a panic, drawn out of her own nightmares and into a waking one.   
  
Koschei struggles against the bed sheets, fighting unseen enemies and speaking a string of incoherent syllables that must make sense in his head, but do not translate to his mouth. Limbs strike out against empty air, coming perilously close to both her and the lamp that rests on the bed table beside her, and acting purely on fearful instinct, she places herself in the safest part of the bed -- directly on top of him.    
  
Exertion strains her muscles and tenses her lungs as she tries to grasp his flying arms and put them in a position where they might not be allowed to do further damage. It takes several attempts to wrap her fingers around his wrists and pin them to the pillow behind his head. She can’t do anything about his legs, but her hips weigh heavy on his abdomen.    
  
“ _ Koschei _ .”   
  
The name strikes the middle ground between angry hiss and desperate plea.    
  
“ _ Koschei! _ ”   
  
Finally, the frantic movements cease.    
  
Despite the ragged pants that plague her lungs and the heartbeat that races in her ears, Theta’s grip remains tight.    


Sweat rolls down Koschei's forehead as his eyes readjust to the darkness of the bedroom, shaking off whatever monsters haunted his sleep. Theta knows that she should move, knows that the danger has passed, knows that there is no reason that she should continue pinning his newly stilled arms to the mattress and pressing the weight of her body into his torso, but her own shock keeps her motionless. Her heart is still racing -- her fear as real as if an armed combatant entered their very room. 

They regard each other in near silence, swapping panting breaths and sensing the continued presence of ghosts that linger in the back of their tired minds. A shiver passes through him, and she can feel it echo in her own muscles.    
  
Minutes tick by, and eventually, Theta relaxes, loosening the grip of her hands on his wrists and the tight squeeze of her knees against his sides.    
  
“You good?” she asks with great uncertainty, eyes settling on his lips to avoid meeting his gaze. She can feel each and every one of his breaths press against her, sense the beating of his heart as it refuses to slow to a reasonable pace, notices the shift of his leg as it brushes against her foot. There are times when she forgets that he is a human -- living and breathing and full of both hopes and dreams and flaws and complications -- and being so suddenly in tune with the very basic beats of his life is  _ jarring _ . It sows doubt in fields where hatred once flourished uncontested. 

Koschei meets her with a calm that does not match the moment. Even in the darkness of the bedroom and the wake of terror, the mask lingers, however, if she squints hard enough, she can glimpse the shifting worry that lies beneath. “Not that I’m complaining, Theta, but why are you on top of me?”    
  
“I --” It takes Theta a moment to wrap her mind around the strangeness of the moment and wrestle her panicked tongue into coherency. “You -- You were having a nightmare. Flailing limbs everywhere. Seemed dangerous to stand by and let it happen.”   
  
It is the truth, or near enough to it that nothing else should matter, however, Koschei still tilts his head in an unspoken inquiry. 

“I’m not doing that now,” he observes after a long pause.   
  
“Right.  _ Right _ . You’re not, are you?” The realization spills from Theta’s mouth so quickly that the words manage to meld into a single garbled sound. She scrambles off of him so quickly that breath leaves his lungs in a quiet  _ oof _ . “Sorry,” she says with a slight wince as she moves back to her own side of the bed, sitting against the pillows and pulling her legs in close as she rests her chin on her knees. It is the same defensive posture that she adopted days ago on the train. It did not protect her then, and she doubts that it will protect her now, but she is still falling back on old habits.    
  
“You could’ve just let me be,” Koschei says, drawing himself up slightly and looking over in her direction, expression unreadable.    
  
“Didn’t have a lot of time to think,” her eyes fix on a single crease in the sheets between them as she presses away echoes of care and concern and the moment in which she became achingly aware of how terribly human Koschei is.    
  
A sigh settles across his shoulders as he casts an eye towards her body language. “Do you want to talk about it?”   
  
“No. Not really.”   
  
Green eyes flick upward for a fleeting moment, and she can see the ghost of a thought hovering in the set of his lips and the softness of his eyes, but he thinks better of voicing it. Instead, he settles back beneath the blankets, pulling them up around his shoulders and saying dryly, “If you want, you can just punch me next time. I’ll wake up.”    
  
He waits for a laugh. She doesn’t offer him one.    
  
Eventually, he tacks on a quiet. “Good night, Theta.”   
  
Silence lingers in its wake. When Theta is absolutely sure that Koschei has once again surrendered to a deep sleep, she takes a pillow and curls up on the floor beside the bed.    
  
She doesn’t trust her instincts enough to stay.


	17. Chapter 17

Koschei was right. The floor is not particularly comfortable. By the time Theta wakes, she has developed aches in muscles that she hasn’t used in years. The bruise on her side is exceptionally sore from being pressed into the unforgiving surface of the floor, and it is harder than usual to find the motivation to open her eyes and face the day. At first, she doesn’t remember why she took to the floor in lieu of the safety of the bed, but it comes back to her in bits and pieces. Flailing arms, the tremors that shook his body, the press of his breaths against her as she was forced to confront the fact that he, too, is human.    
  
Perhaps it would have been better to cling to the false comforts provided by drowsy ignorance.    
  
When she finally manages to summon enough will to crack a single eye open, she finds herself face to face with an impatiently tapping foot. With a groan, she turns her back to him, burying her face in the pillow.    
  
From somewhere above her, Koschei says, "We're going jogging." 

The statement leaves little room for negotiation. It’s a knife pressed against Theta’s throat, daring her to test its resolve. She hates few things more than being pressed into a corner, and her life has been nothing but corners ever since they were forced into their unwilling engagement. If Koschei continues to needlessly pile on, then one of these days, she is going to snap.   
  
"Are you above asking questions now?" she asks, voice muffled by the soft down of the pillow. It crackles with energy. His presumption makes her angry -- angry at herself, angry at him, angry at the world -- and for the first time in days, she has a restless itch to do something about it. If that thing is merely arguing with the impenetrable wall of Koschei’s public persona, then that’s fine with her. Ideally, she would aim a bit higher than that -- needling public officials, starting a fight with a journalist -- but on this particular day and in these particular circumstances, she is willing to settle for denying Koschei the degree of control that he has grown used to. 

A sigh heavier than a dying star precedes Koschei’s begrudging rephrasing of the command. "Dear Theta, would you please be so kind as to go jogging with me?"

" _ Why _ ?" The word is short, but it bites. Logically, her life will be easier if she learns to tread water in Koschei’s wake, but she’s never taken particularly kindly to being told what to do. She likes running, but the very idea that it might be what’s expected of her twists the activity towards revulsion. 

There’s a rustle as Koschei crouches, lessening the power imbalance and meeting her at her level. It’s a calculated move. He knows it, she knows it, and she refuses to turn back around and face him. "Because we need to talk, and it'll probably be easier if we're too tired to tear out each other's throats."

"Who did you steal that idea from? Amy?"

"Yasmin Khan, actually."

"Who is Yaz seeing?" Theta wrinkles her nose in surprise as she swings herself up into a seated position, eyes finally meeting his. She is fundamentally offended that Yasmin Khan would be speaking to Koschei and not  _ her _ , but she has to admit that she hasn't exactly made an effort to seek the woman out since she snuck out onto the roof on that first afternoon in the Capitol. They’ve seen each other in passing, of course, at the tribute parade and in the grey and labyrinthine hallways of the training facility, but in all of those settings, Theta was far from social. She’s been withdrawn, angry, focused on nothing except for Koschei and, recently, her vain attempts to prepare Rennette for the uninhabitable environment of the Arena.

Relief flickers in the brown depths of Koschei’s gaze before it hardens back into the unreadable mask. "No one. Apparently her sister once courted a boy who was gorgeous but absolutely insufferable. She started making him do laps around the interior of the District 12 fence before he came by to see her."

Theta’s eyes narrow, but her heart leaps, rage and confusion momentarily forgotten. "Are you implying that I’m insufferable?”   
  
“Yes,” he answers without a single beat of hesitation, fully intending to wield the word as a knife.   
  
Anyone else might have been put out by the accusation, and indeed, that seems to be what he expects from her, but a genuine smile breaks across Theta’s face, the first in a very, very long while. Pride is a rare and foreign feeling -- she has always been too riddled with doubt and regret to form a high opinion of herself -- but it spreads through her body with incredible warmth. For years, she has dedicated herself to nothing more than inconveniencing people who use their power to profit from the suffering of others, and it is utterly delightful to think that she has been so successful that she has earned the label of  _ insufferable _ . Furthermore, it is comforting to know that despite Koschei’s recent claims of love, some part of him -- however slight -- still  _ despises _ her. It returns a small degree of order to a world eternally trapped in entropy. 

Koschei meets it with obvious confusion, his lack of understanding lining his brow with a half dozen wrinkled peaks and valleys. He inhales sharply through his nose and stands, once again towering over her with the illusion of control as he rattles off a quick, “I’ll see you downstairs,” before disappearing out the door.    
  
Theta’s eyes follow him as he goes, and the fleeting smile fades away. She is tempted to reclaim the bed and settle in for a nap, ignoring his desire to talk altogether, but pride and joy are strangely empowering. She has an entire list of questions for him, full of things that have been piling up ever since the Reaping, and this seems as good a time as any to trap him into answering them. With luck, she might be able to take control of the conversation and force him into forgetting whatever subjects of discussion that he intends to force upon her. Quite unexpectedly, she possesses both the force of will and the energy required to play his game and try to _win_. It's a refreshing change of pace. 

  
  
  


Theta rendezvous with Koschei in front of the fitness room twenty minutes later, already disheveled. Though she valiantly attempted to wrangle her hair into a topknot so that it might be out of her way, it is too short to manage the style. Stray strands of both her bangs and half of the back have drifted out of place, falling against her face and tickling the back of her neck. She probably should have abandoned her efforts entirely and slunk off to Romana’s room to request a headband, but she ruled that the half-successful mess was good enough to serve its purpose and ventured out regardless. Had she been present to witness this tragedy, Amy would have been openly disappointed in her. In the Capitol, you never know when you might end up on camera.    
  
Koschei gaze lingers on the errant waves, but he does not comment. He seems to have mostly collected himself in the interim, retreating back into the persona that he clings to as if it is his only hope of salvation. “You took your time.”   
  
Her nose wrinkles as she brushes past him, opening the door behind him with a quick spin. She feels newly invigorated, like the whirling storms that Amy’s designs so often foist upon her. “You didn’t. Raced off like you saw a ghost, didn’t you?”    
  
Though she did not intend to hold the door open for him, Koschei steps past her before she has a chance to shut it in his face. “I did. Technically speaking,” he replies, dryly casting the comment back over his shoulder as he winds his way between the haphazard mixture of old equipment and new technology. 

Theta follows close behind. “I have questions,” she says quickly, worried that if she sits on her intentions for too long, she’ll find herself manipulated back into the stubborn, passive silence that she has occupied for days, speaking of nothing but self-defense and the intentions of a wholly fictionalized group of raccoons. 

She can see Koschei’s sigh settle across his shoulders, but she does not hear it. “Can they wait until we’re moving, Theta?”    
  
Theta cannot help but wonder if Koschei thought this plan all the way to its conclusion before he proposed it. They are locked into this activity together -- sweat and exhaustion and all. If she is stuck in a room and halfway out of breath, then he is, too, and given the fact that he rarely ventures out of his mansion back home in the District, she doubts that he is as avid a runner as she is. Maybe, for once, the power will shift, and she’ll have an easy leg up on him. She feels good about this. It's a new feeling, but she leans into it with all of the faith and trust that she can muster.    


Together, they step into a back room, and Koschei locks the door behind them. It’s windowless, and all four walls are lined with dormant screens waiting to be brought to life. Much of the Capitol experience is constructed around artificiality, and fitness is no different. Running outside is discouraged, due both to congestion and the inherent chaos of outsiders not being able to tell whether you’re running for fitness or running away from trouble, however, most high-end residential buildings have found a decent substitute for the experience -- when surrounded by screens and jogging on a moving platform, you can  _ almost _ believe that you’re moving through a field or walking through some long-dead city.    
  
Knowing that Koschei would likely fight her if she tries to jostle for the remote, Theta doesn’t bother. Content to wait, she hops up onto the raised conveyor platform with a skip that almost passes for  _ jaunty _ , feet delicately skirting the pressure sensitive plate that marks the emergency stop.    


Slightly out of sync, the screens around them flicker to life, and Koschei begins to rotate through the available environments, pausing briefly on a sunlit forest.    
  
The image sparks panic. “ _ No _ ,” she says strongly, turning her eyes towards the ceiling in an attempt to avoid looking at the trees for too long. The familiar specter of doubt hovers over her shoulder, threatening to sink its claws back into her chest. She shoves it aside with a few deep breaths. Now is not the time. For the first time in a long time, she has glimpsed opportunity and latched onto a faint glimmer of hope, and she is not going to allow Koschei or her trauma to snatch it away from her. 

The screens change again, moving between drifting snow and parched deserts before Koschei eventually settles on grassy cliffs overlooking a distant sea. Theta glances over at him with raised eyebrows, silently awaiting an explanation for the choice, but he avoids her gaze, keeping his eyes fastidiously turned downwards as he negotiates the step up onto the platform. He settles a couple feet away from her, close enough that they can hear each other without straining, but not so close that they are in danger of bumping elbows, and with the small remote in his palm, he sets both the digital world and the floor below them into motion.    
  
It takes a handful of seconds for her to fall into a steady rhythm, but once her feet are securely under her, she jumps on the first of her many queries with no small amount of aggression. "Were you going to tell me about our scheduled on-air appearance at the tribute interviews or was I supposed to just figure it out for myself?" 

He glances sideways for a passing second before a stumble forces him to turn his attention back towards forward-progress. Surprise lines the corners of his eyes and lends a strange sense of buoyancy to his voice. "Who told you?"

"Caesar. I turned on yesterday’s broadcast. He teased it. Amy confirmed when she swung by to drop off the tribute costumes.” 

“You never watch the broadcasts.”  It is incredibly early in the run, but she can already hear the struggle begin to set into his lungs and fray the edges of his voice, forcing breaths in unnatural pauses and turning the volume down. 

Theta, on the other hand, is thriving. There’s a bounce in her step and she seizes upon his exhaustion with a predator’s quickness. “Not what I asked. Were you going to tell me or weren’t you?”   
  
"I was going to. We were caught up in other things and you didn't need the distraction."    
  
Beneath the obvious physical strain, Theta can hear the dead, hollow thud of mistruth that lurks within the words. She as been subject to his many excuses for days now, been forced to answer his questions and confront his needs and desires without being allowed to assert her own, and she is tired of it. She will not stand by and be a pawn in this game. She will not stand willingly at his side while he tries to mold her into whatever ideal suits him, condemning her guilt and her sadness while simultaneously using it to his own advantage. If they are going to be a partnership in this faux tableaux of an engagement, then she demands equal footing. 

"You don't get to decide what I do and do not deserve to know,” she snaps. Her breathing is barely affected, though a faint sheen of sweat has begun to gather on her skin, a side-effect more closely tied to her frantic need to assert herself than the physical exertion. She could run for hours, if she wanted to.    
  
“Fine,” he grumbles.    
  
She does not doubt that he will argue the concession to its death later, once it becomes inconvenient, but for now, she is content to move onto her next point. "What are your nightmares about?" 

His answer is barely loud enough to rise above his labored breath. "Dying. Being dead. A thousand stays of execution. And yours?”    
  
A ghost of a long-dead bird flits across the tiles of the ceiling.    
  
“I’m asking the questions.”   
  
“You don’t get to decide what I do and do not deserve to know.” He pants between every word as he repackages her insistence and shoves it back at her, trapping her in a cage of her own making.    
  
Fine, if that’s the way he wants to play, then she’ll simply have to outsmart him. Her most pressing questions revolve around things that would be much more difficult to turn back around. For now, however, she settles into a series of half-truths, circling back to secrets that he already knows. “Electrocution. Screaming. Sometimes Rose is there. Sometimes she isn’t.”    
  
Before he has the chance to muster enough breath and energy to ask a question of his own and steer the conversation in whatever direction he initially intended, she jumps upon the most pressing question of them all, the one that has been gnawing at her since he first invoked the word _love_. "When did you realize that you loved me?"

A long pause stretches between them, filled only with the thud of their footsteps and the quiet whir of the mechanism that spins the floor. It lasts for so long that she wonders if he even knows the answer, or if she has found the one thing that he cannot manage to twist in his favor and he’ll lapse into stubborn silence forever.    
  
Eventually, however, he speaks. His words are slow, careful, and undercut by his inability to keep pace with her physically. "Sometime after I yelled at you at that party. I felt terrible about it, in a way I never expected to. At first I thought it was because you won. I was being torn apart in the press and you were untouchable. Beyond reproach, even. So I started doing things like getting you removed from places, and tipping off Peacekeepers that you might have illegal substances and --'

Her rage flashes red as she springs to interrupt him, "That was you? I could've been killed if they found anything, Koschei." Her mind races, remembering the wave of worry that washed over her when she returned to her home that day and found it being torn apart and picked over by a dozen earnest, uniformed scavengers. She had been convinced that they were going to drag her away to be imprisoned and executed -- or worse -- and it never occurred to her that Koschei, of all people, might have been behind it. 

"You wanted to die anyway. Really, I was doing you a favor."

"I wanted a death I could control. I didn't want to be  _ murdered _ ." She wants to fight him. Every muscle in her body begs for combat. Her fingers curl inward, nails biting into the soft flesh of her palms, but she holds herself back. A promise is a promise, and she promised herself that she would no longer engage in violence. 

He ignores her anger, possibly because he lacks the energy. His steps are slowing, and every so often, he catches himself drifting further and further behind her and has to force himself to lunge forward and regain ground. He’s not going to last much longer, which proves her initial suspicions correct. Koschei did, in fact, fail to think this through. Or, perhaps, he underestimated her. Theta does not doubt that he will think twice before attempting to corner her again.    
  
Brown eyes flutter closed as he fights to continue speaking. "Can I continue or are you going to keep interrupting me, love?" 

She rolls her eyes and turns her face forward, focusing her gaze on the grassy cliffs and worn paths spread before them. Ignoring all of her instincts, she resigns herself to momentary silence, allowing him the space required to finish voicing his thoughts.    


"I eventually figured out that I was drawn to you. Hated myself for it. Started doing absurd things like saving your life. You know that state dinner? The President wanted to have you publicly executed. I convinced him that you were on morphling and had absolutely no grasp on where you were or what you were saying, and he agreed to bar you from the Capitol instead. Eventually, they figured out that I was lying, and it wasn’t hard for the powers that be to draw a line between Point A and Point B.” He draws a deep, shuddering breath. “When they threw an engagement ring at me, it wasn't an accident. Everyone who matters already knew I was in love with you, and they figured that you would never bother to love me back.”   
  
Her heartbeat pounds in her ears. She doesn’t know whether or not it’s true, but she has to admit that it makes  _ sense _ . She hates herself for not noticing, for unintentionally allowing him to have power over her even when they weren’t speaking.    
  
Koschei seizes onto the silence afforded by her racing mind. “When did you fall in love with me, Theta?”   
  
She scoffs, turning disdainful eyes in his direction. “I’m not in love with you.”    
  
“Then why did you sleep on the floor?”

In a flash of anger, Theta decides that she has had enough of this. It takes a few stuttering strides to maneuver herself into the right position, and then steps sideways off of the platform, landing squarely on the emergency stop panel.    
  
She doesn’t turn around to witness his fall, but she hears both the crash and the curses that follow.    
  
“Do you need a medic?”   
  
“ _ Get out _ .”    
  
It’s the one command that she doesn’t mind obeying. 


	18. Chapter 18

Koschei’s rage is tangible. It seeps through a thousand microscopic cracks in his persona, evident to such a degree that even Sparrow and Rennette seem to cower away from him as he runs through today’s instruction. Theta, however, leans in closer, bracing her elbows against the inside of her knees and cocking her head as her alert gaze takes note of each and every tremor. She is not delighting in his anger, but she is profoundly interested in it. It feels real in a way that his usual aura does not.    
  
Theta’s eyes keep drifting to the cut at Koschei’s right temple. He must have called a medic sometime after she abandoned him in the fitness room earlier, since the wound is sealed with a line of grey-tinged medical glue and reinforced with two small butterfly bandages to ensure that the skin stays together securely enough to avoid the long-term consequences of a scar. A smattering of blood drops stain his collar, and he did not bother to change his clothes before training, either because his rage had proved too distracting for the facilitation of mundane tasks or because he simply ran short on time.    
  
Sparrow was the only person foolish enough to inquire about the injury, and in response, Koschei derided him so thoroughly that he has not dared to open his mouth since. Perhaps Theta ought to have stepped in and defended the boy, but he was in no direct danger, so she merely watched and listened, absorbing all the information that she could. It is a lesson that she learned from the very best.    
  
Koschei’s running through weapon basics -- purpose, posture, stance -- all useful things to know if you’re one of the select tributes who is both brave enough to storm the Cornucopia for supplies and lucky enough to survive its slaughter. Personally, Theta would advise that both Sparrow and Rennette run away from that death trap as soon as the first cannon sounds. It’s what she did. Koschei did not, but Koschei had been one of the older tributes in his Games. Rennette and Sparrow are both younger than even Theta had been, albeit by only a couple of months in Sparrow’s case. They would not be able to hold their own if targeted by the entire pack of Careers. It is more difficult to scavenge and make supplies, but depending on the setting, it is entirely possible. Rocks are decent projectiles. A stick can be fashioned into a spear, and if one is exceptionally cruel-minded, the Arena itself can become a weapon, however, that was made significantly more difficult in the wake of Theta’s unconventional tampering.    
  
Every handful of sentences, Koschei’s gaze flicks towards Theta. He never breaks his stride, but there’s an edge to the gesture that speaks both to enormous fear and a desperate need for approval. Though she appreciates those deep emotional truths more than the cavalier lies that he normally wears, she doesn’t know what he expects her to do. In this moment, they are beholden to their duties. There are children present. It is not the time to shout curses and sort through fifteen years’ worth of foolish dreams and stumbling misconceptions.    
  
Eventually, she chooses to avert her eyes. Focusing on the rafters is more comfortable than being forced to hold those periodic, frantic gazes, however, forgoing the anchor on her vision also means forgoing the anchor on her attention, and her mind begins to wander elsewhere, turning over thoughts of dinner and Romana’s recent lecture and the sheer relief that she’ll inevitably feel once the Games are finally over.    
  
“Theta!”    
  
By the time it finally breaks through, the name carries a force that suggests that Koschei has hurled it at her multiple times with no answer.    
  
“Sorry,” Theta replies almost sheepishly as she drags her attention back to the present moment, giving her head a tiny, involuntary shake to clear the fog. “Bit tired. What were we saying?” Green eyes dart between the tributes and Koschei in turn, eyebrows raising as she awaits an answer.    
  
“I need a demonstration partner,” Koschei says, words delicately straddling the knife-edge of his rage. His eyes bore into her with unmatched intensity as his fingers restlessly fiddle with the blunt edge of a practice dagger.    
  
It is neither his tone nor the gesture that gives her pause, but her commitment to her shaky idealism. “Perhaps it would be best if you walked them through it instead.” Her sweeping hands indicate at the tributes who sit to either side of her, lingering slightly longer on Sparrow than on Rennette. “Hands-on learning is a brilliant tool. Can’t say enough good things about it.”   
  
“I need your reflexes,  _ love _ .”    
  
Over the past week, Koschei has invoked the pet name so often that she hardly notices it anymore, however, in this particular instance, it carries a weight that speaks of the consequences of failing to play their parts in this little masquerade. It is a reminder that if these children begin to think that their mentors might not be happily in love, then they might start to share those thoughts with others. It is strong enough to force a sigh from her lips and compel her to rise to her feet, closing the difference between them in a handful of wary steps.    
  
Relief flickers in his eyes, and approval flirts with the set of his mouth as he plucks a second dagger from the weapons cart. It is abundantly clear that he is wresting for control again, and her willingness to indulge his whim -- albeit begrudgingly -- is enough to temporarily dampen the blazing conflagration of his anger, though she can still see its sparks flashing in his eyes.    
  
Taking her hand in his, Koschei presses the hilt of a dagger into her palm, curling her fingers around it with his own. Theta can hear the scrape of his lungs against his anger and feel the trickle of his breath against her ear. She turns her head slightly, eyes tracking the bobbing of his throat as he fights to swallow back the emotions that battle just below the surface of his skin.    
  
“I don’t --”   
  
He stops her with a hiss. “You do.”   
  
In a single fluid motion, he steps back from her and then lunges forward, striking out with his own weapon. Acting entirely on instinct and long-forgotten muscle memory, she ducks and parries. He was braced for the first, but not the second, and when she presses him back, he stumbles. She takes advantage of the opening, dropping low to sweep his feet out from under him with her leg and sending him squarely to the ground. His dagger leaves his hand on impact, clattering to the floor. It is his second fall of the day at her hands, and the whole exchange lasted no longer than twenty seconds.    
  
Sparrow claps. Rennette stares on in rapt silence.    
  
Theta stands, staring down at Koschei’s fallen form, chest rising and falling with every breath as she carefully guides her mind away from the edge of panic. She has always been an effective fighter. In group training during her Games -- she came alive whenever a blade was placed into her hands -- but guilt and a fear of abusing her own power chased her away from weapons altogether. She has already hurt too many people, taken too many lives, and even though the daggers are fake and no one was ever in any real danger, it churns up her memories, muddying normal responses with trauma responses.    
  
A pleased grin splits Koschei’s face -- white and gleaming and deeply unsettling -- and she is suddenly, acutely aware that even though he lost the exchange, he got  _ exactly _ what he wanted. He’s baiting her with the promise of power, luring her towards his increasing lofty goals, and the realization sends fear washing over her. She’s afraid -- so horribly,  _ terribly _ afraid -- that it might work.    
  
Overwhelmed by the bitterness of her disgust as it washes across her tongue, she tosses her dagger to the ground and turns her back, fully intending to go sulk in some unseen corner while the other three finish the morning’s instruction, but Koschei interrupts her before she manages to take her second step.   
  
“Take Sparrow with you.”   
  
She turns, mind armed with a dozen assorted protestations, but Koschei meets her gaze with a smirk so blindingly smug that it halts her mid-thought. His rage is completely gone, chased away by the satisfaction of his small victory.    
  
“What?”   
  
“Take Sparrow with you,” he repeats, smugly propping himself up on one elbow. “The last time you were here, you taught Rennette something. It’s Sparrow’s turn.”   
  
Theta lifts her chin and shifts her weight as she stares Koschei down, challenging the order.    
  
Koschei does not mirror her intensity in kind. Instead, he retreats behind that familiar confident mask, raising a hand to shoo her away. “Go on. Have fun.”   
  
Tense silence stretches for a long minute before she finally acquiesces, spinning on her heel and beckoning for Sparrow to follow her. The boy leaps to his feet and follows along at her shoulder with an unsettling amount of enthusiasm.    
  
“How did you do that? Can you teach me? I haven’t been able to get a hit on Koschei since we started,” he says, words spilling out of his mouth so quickly that Theta can barely finish tracking one sentence before he’s moved onto the next.   
  
Theta does not so much as glance over at him as she replies, “No. We’re going to go through poisonous plants. Doesn’t matter how many people you can slaughter if you don’t know which berries will kill you and which ones won’t.”   
  
Sparrow makes no attempt to hide his disappointment. “You taught Rennette how to climb.”   
  
Theta stops, pivoting to face him. Irritation crackles just beneath the surface of her skin. It isn’t the mirror of Koschei’s anger -- far from it -- but it still possesses enough raw power that the boy takes a step backwards. “Do you know how to climb?” she asks, eyebrows raised and tone teetering on the brink of an accusation.   
  
“Yes, but --” Sparrow begins, but Theta cuts him off before he has a chance to finish his thought.    
  
“Then there’s no point in learning to climb, is there?”   
  
“Guess not,” he grumbles, though both his tone and the insolent way his eyes roll skywards suggest that his true beliefs lie elsewhere.    
  
Theta stares at him for a long moment, wondering whether or not it’s worth it to explain why she refuses to engage in weaponry, but she eventually thinks better of the idea. No tribute should be told that winning the Games is worse than losing them mere days before they enter the Arena. It wouldn’t be fair.    
  
She shoves her hands into her pockets and inclines her head in the direction of the monitor that dominates the far wall. “Come on, then. Let’s get this out of the way.”   
  
  
  
That evening, Theta retires long before Koschei.    
  
The assumptions that he voiced that morning force her back into the comforts of the bed, though not without certain precautions. She once again erects the questionably effective wall of pillows, and so thoroughly wraps herself in a sheet that she doubts that she will be able to break out of it without the benefit of clear-minded consciousness.    
  
By the time Koschei finally joins her, Theta’s already fast asleep.   
  
She jolts awake in a cold sweat. The metallic memory of electricity clings to her tongue and the smell of smoke fills her nose, and though she doesn’t hear screams, she knows they must be close behind. They always are. A brutal sob rips from her throat, so hoarse and tired that it cannot be the first of the night.    
  
The warm body that supports her head shifts beneath her as an intervening hand wipes away the tear that traces her cheek. Despite her best efforts to prevent it, she must have once again drifted towards Koschei's side of the bed. She should be enraged that he presumes to exist in her space, embarrassed that she keeps falling into his gravity, bitter that she allows him to see her like this, but her nightmares are draining, and she does not have the energy to feel anything but tired.   
  
“Stop,” she says, reaching up her own hand to guide his away. Perception still twisted from the haze of sleep, she misses him entirely, swatting only at empty air.    
  
“Do you really want to do this alone?” The question is gentle yet prodding, seeking to steer her in the direction that best suits him. Theta knows which answer he is fishing for, and she knows that she wants nothing less than to play directly into his hands, however, she cannot deny that in this instance and this instance alone, he’s _right_. She doesn’t want to be alone. She’s never wanted to be alone. She keeps an empty room in her house in the vague hope that someone in need might stay for a while. She blabbers to sellers in the marketplace for as long as they will listen. Even when she’s not trying, she bonds with cab drivers and her fellow victors and the stylists and Romana.    
  
Though she cloaks herself in stubborn isolation, every part of her being cries out for companionship.   
  
When she finally answers, the word is no louder than the cry of a newborn mouse.“No.”   
  
“I didn’t think so.”    
  
Koschei's hand moves to her hair, idly running his fingers from her temple to the end of its length before returning to the start to repeat the motion. His nails scrape gently against the delicate skin, but she doesn’t mind it. Her eyes close, a sigh parts her lips, and for a moment, he hesitates, hand lingering motionless and featherlight on her scalp.   
  
“Do you want me to stop?”   
  
“No.”   
  
She drifts back to sleep beneath the comforting lull of his touch, and for the first time in a long time, she does not dream of death and sorrow, and when the first light of morning sneaks through the window and rouses her to wakefulness, her body is still tangled with his. 


	19. Chapter 19

Time slips through their fingers like starlight -- hard to catch and harder to keep. The blissful comfort of night fades into the demanding call day all too quickly, yanking Theta and Koschei away from their fragile peace and urging them back towards their many responsibilities. 

Even as Theta’s mind and heart demand that the world slow down and allow her a moment to take a few deep breaths and orientate herself, the Games trudge ever onward, unconcerned with the trivialities of anyone’s well-being, nonetheless those who have been shaped and affected by its many horrors. For a brief moment, she dares to dream of the moment weeks from now when these Games draw to a close and she can once again return to the dull routine of her everyday life, but all too quickly, she remembers that her life isn’t her own anymore. She will have to share it with Koschei. They will have to settle in a single house, live this lie hour to hour and moment to moment lest someone begin to catch on. Everything will be different, and most terrifyingly of all,  _ she _ might be different. The thought plunges her into the cold fire of panic, the press of his lightly doing body burns at each and every point of contact, and she scrambles out of the sheets, bare feet padding on the floor as she seeks momentary solace in the bathroom.    
  
Theta braces her hands on either side of the sink. Each breath is painful and shallow, scraping against the tightened surface of her lungs and throat as she fights to regain control over her beating heart and racing mind. Last night, she allowed Koschei to hold her, allowed him to comfort her, allowed him to care about her even when she did not care about herself, and she dreads what that might mean. She doesn’t love him. She  _ can’t _ love him. She is broken and damaged and unlovable, but most of all, she should be  _ better _ than that.    
  
Love is something meant for other people -- people who do not enter an Arena and kill to survive and resign themselves to a career set around encouraging future generations to do the same. Just as she would not expect anyone else to love her, she should not allow herself to fall for a murderer. Despite all the evidence -- the fans that fall and fawn at Koschei’s feet, the softness with which he looks at her, the way his touches indelibly write themselves into her skin -- loving a murderer is not something that people should do. It defies logic and reason and morality and all the fragile ideals to which she stubbornly clings in order to keep herself sane. 

Her fingers shake as she turns the tap and splashes cold water on her face, seeking to clear her mind and chase the sleep from her eyes. It does nothing to improve her mood or fix the runaway beating of her heart.    
  
Despising Koschei has always been her anchor in these Games. It has been the single constant, even while names and faces and topography rotate around her and she falls in and out of favor with the Capitol. She cannot stomach the face that her hatred might be stolen from her, that it might have left her heart days ago, and that it might be too late to get it back.    
  
What does she have left in this world if every single basic truth that has defined her existence has been called into question?    
  
A gentle knock strikes the door, and Theta quickly turns the tap back off and fights to shove her vulnerabilities back inside, desperately attempting to bury them deeply enough that Koschei might never be able to uncover them. History has proven that that is a pointless endeavor -- Koschei is more perceptive than anyone gives him credit for -- but that doesn’t stop her from trying. She steels herself with two more deep breaths before sliding the door open.    
  
Koschei was clearly in the process of reaching for the handle himself, and surprise ripples through his body as it opens without him. His eyes meet hers as his hand draws tight to his sternum in a pointless and obvious attempt to pretend that he was not intending to invade her space. 

“What do you want?” Theta asks, tongue barbed.    
  
He picks his words carefully as his gaze flicks from feature to feature on her face.“I was concerned.”

“Don’t be,” Theta moves to close the door again, but Koschei stops her with a quick hand braced against its edge. He winces slightly as metal and carbon slam against his palm, but he does not waver. After a tense moment of unforgiving stares and breaths swapped in too-close proximity, Theta lets go of the door and retreats, hopping onto the counter. It makes her a smidge taller than him, and she’ll take whatever ground she can get.    
  
A sigh floats past his lips as he turns his face skyward, appealing to a long-lost deity that would never deign to listen to whatever paltry concerns plague his twisted thoughts. “Would you rather it if I pretended that you were fine? Ignored you in the light of the day when your pride’s too high and you’re too good for my help? Bathed in my own loneliness and nursed my heartbreak until the scattered moments when my care is  _ convenient _ for you?” He lingers on every word with untamed bitterness that does not manage to impact Theta as strongly as he had hoped.    
  
“ _ Yes _ .” The word is cruel and shallow and devoid of any real consideration.    
  
Koschei relinquishes his position by the door, closing the space between them with a hunter’s grace, leaning into the counter with his hands braced on either side of her hips, gazing up into her eyes. It is the exact mirror of her posture from mere moments ago, as she fought to collect herself in front of the sink. 

Her eyes track the movement as his tongue wets his lips -- slow, deliberate, contemplative. After a long moment’s pause, he finally speaks, making great efforts to keep his voice reasonably level. “I can’t accept that.”    
  
“You have to,” she snips back.    
  
“No. No, Theta. I don’t.” He sighs again, this one even heavier than his last. For a moment, his mask wavers -- offering up a moment of quiet sorrow before hardening back into steadfast resolve. “There are two of us in this arrangement, Theta. Two hearts, two minds, a hundred conflicting interests. I want to make this as painless for us as possible, and that includes making it less painful for me. If you’re going to treat me like I’m something  _ disposable _ \--” He spits the word so strongly that Theta catches herself leaning backwards, away from him. “ -- Then I won’t give you anything. No interview announcements. No ginger candies when you’re hungover. No advice. No help with Sparrow or Rennette. No touches when you’re spiraling and no hand when you stumble. I’m a person, Theta, I’m not here to be exploited at your beck and call. You want to be on your own? You want me to leave you to die? Fine. I’ll do it.”   
  
It strikes so far from what she expected him to say that it takes her a long, open-mouthed moment to fully absorb and comprehend the words. When she finally does, she scoffs. “You’re bluffing.”    
  
Anger rises, electric and red hot as he leans in closer, carefully enunciating every letter as he says,“I’m not.” Brown eyes burn beneath long lashes, and his breath tickles against Theta’s neck as he lingers in her space. She can see the tension in the wound on his forehead, tugging at the tiny bandages that hold the split in his skin shut.    
  
The silence stretches between them. She can’t think, she can’t process, she can’t place a finger on whatever emotion wells in her chest and threatens to send tears spilling from the corners of her eyes. It isn’t grief. It isn’t desperation. It’s something else, something a great deal more slippery and harder to quantify. In the end, she manages to voice nothing more than a quick, banal protestation. “People will talk.”    
  
“Lovers quarrel all the time. I can fend for myself. Unless, of course, you wanted to change your mind? Find enough kindness in your heart to stop suffocating mine?” The thumb of his right hand whispers against the inside of her wrist, sending her heart into the back of her throat. It flusters her ever so slightly, and for the first time in this conversation, she speaks absolute truth. 

“I don’t understand.” The words tear and fray as they leave her throat, cut on the edges of as yet unborn sobs.    
  
It is not what he wants to hear. The touch at her wrist withdraws as he pushes himself away from the counter, moving back towards the relative comfort of the doorway. “Then maybe you need a bit of space to figure it out. I’ll give you a wide berth. Enjoy your time alone, Theta. Do try to keep the children alive, will you?”   
  
He starts to turn and walk away, but she stops him with a snap of his name. “Koschei?”    
  
“What?” he says, raising his eyebrows expectantly as he glances back over his shoulder.    
  
Tears escape from her eyes, gleaming on her cheeks as they mark their paths, motivated by that same, slippery emotion that she cannot seem to identify.“You left me to die, Koschei. What did I  _ ever _ do to you that was worse than that?”    
  
“If you’re still weighing our childhood sins on the scales of fate, love, then this isn’t a conversation we need to be having at the moment. I was very specific. I’ll tell Romana to send you to me when you’re ready to acknowledge your culpability in this little arrangement of ours. Until then, I’ll see you at the interview. Tell Sparrow and Rennette whichever lie about my absence best _ suits you _ .” Derision drips from the final thought.    
  
A thought, barely tied to the conversation, slips past her lips. “How many days?”   
  
Surprise lifts Koschei’s tone. “What did you say?”

“How many days are left in training? I don’t know. I never paid attention before.” Worry floods her mind as she desperately tries to cobble together her vague knowledge of the process. She’s barely engaged with the Tributes in previous years, barely attended her obligations, coasted by in a haze of grief punctuated by flashbacks. She didn’t know where to begin with this year’s training, and she certainly doesn’t know when it ends.    
  
Amusement flickers at the corner of his mouth. “Seven days of training, then scoring, then interviews. I’m sure you’ll be able to manage it on your own. After all, we’ve done this for years, haven’t we?” He pauses in feigned thought. “Oh wait,  _ I’ve _ done this for years. Enjoy your solitude, Theta. I hope you find it appropriately  _ enlightening _ .” 

Koschei disappears before she has a chance to interrupt him with another question, leaving both the room and her heart feeling strangely empty. 


	20. Chapter 20

Three sets of footsteps echo against the concrete floor of the training facility, one set less than usual. 

Theta does not know where Koschei disappeared to, and if asked, she would claim that she does not care enough to find out. Secretly, however, she has been tempted to confront Romana and demand information, even though it has only been a couple hours since he left. It isn't that she is willing to admit love and offer him what it wants, rather, she doubts her ability to train the tributes on her own. In fifteen years, she has only committed to a dozen or so tasks, mostly choosing to lurk around the fringes and offer a guiding hand only when cajoled. Most of her work happened during the Games themselves, after the tributes have narrowly escaped deaths and someone must broker deals in the vain hopes of keeping them alive. Granted she was not particularly good at it -- Koschei held the advantage there, too -- but it kept her contributions to the team from being disregarded altogether. Every so often, she managed to secure a tool or a valuable container of medicine. 

She has never found herself one on two with tributes, and the prospect fills her with dread. Failure seems almost inevitable, and perhaps that is what Koschei intended. Though he repeatedly insists that he is advocating in her best interest and the best interest of the tributes, she remains rightfully skeptical of the veracity of his claims. He continually ratchets up his expectations for her behavior, raising the stakes each and every time they speak, and gets angrier and angrier when she refuses to meet him at his rapidly changing levels. Asking her to play a part in this fake engagement was one thing, but demanding her love and staging a coup are another beast entirely, and she is hardly prepared to reckon with either. She barely knows how to navigate the engagement, a matter that has been further complicated by his decision to take flight.    
  
“I thought Koschei would be here,” Sparrow says as she guides them towards a woodsy corner of the facility. He turns in a deliberate circle as he walks, looking around for any trace of the missing mentor.    
  
“He’ll be gone for a few days,” Theta replies bluntly. She hopes that that will be the end of this particular line of inquiry, but Sparrow presses on.    
  
“Where is he? Did something happen? Did he get in a  _ fight _ ? Is that why his head was messed up yesterday?” His voice rises in excitement as his mind embraces the possibility. 

Theta has an entire list of things that she doesn’t like about Sparrow, and his ceaseless awe for violence sits at the very top in big bold lettering. Though she did not personally know Koschei during his Games -- he is a couple years older than she is -- she doubts that he was as comfortable with the training process as Sparrow seems to be. For all the things that she doesn’t appreciate about Koschei, despite his constant efforts to don that cool mask and pretend that he is unbothered by his past, she doesn’t get the impression that he’s entirely comfortable with what he did. If he was truly at peace, he wouldn’t share her rage. Sparks wouldn’t fly whenever they dared to be in a room together for longer than five minutes. He wouldn’t bandy half-formed offers to take over the world. It is part of what she so loathed about him for the fifteen years of their forced company, and in the past days, that assumption has eroded away, so gradually that she had not noticed until it was almost completely gone. 

It also did not escape her notice that Koschei didn’t really try to beat her the other day when he goaded her into fighting him. He brandished a dagger countless times in the Arena. Aside from a small bag of provisions and matches, it was the only thing that he successfully fetched from the Cornucopia, and he took a dozen lives with it. Even when offered the choice of snatching other weapons from the bodies of his fallen competitors -- bows and arrows, spears, a set of throwing knives, a great number of things that would extend his reach and keep him more reliably out of harm’s way -- he did not take them. The same weapon carried him from the first canon to the last.    
  
Theta may have been a deft hand with a dagger during her own Training, as Koschei so rudely observed on the train, but logically, she should be no match for him. She never used one in the Arena. Never dared to look people in the face and feel the life ebb from them. The only blood that stained her skin during her Games was her own. She distanced herself from her own deeds on purpose, and tried to place herself in a position where she did not have to deal with witnessing the immediate consequences of her actions. She miscalculated. There was a duo of Careers not far from her, hiding in a patch of trees that they did not know were now weapons. As the force of the shock threw her across the clearing, as the burning of her own flesh filled her nostrils, she heard their screams. They are the same screams that haunt her nights and her flashbacks now, weaving in and out with the pained sobs of Rose Tyler as she met her last. Her cowardice failed to protect her, just as it failed to protect Rose, just as it failed to preserve her freedom and left her tied in an engagement that she never wanted, just as it fails to protect her from Koschei’s perceptive gaze and the influence that quickly follows it.

However, perhaps those who will bear the biggest brunt of her cowardice are the two tributes who stand expectantly beside her, waiting for guidance that she isn’t prepared to give. Ironic that Koschei abandoned her during the training for her own Games, leaving her to either fend for herself or die, and that he has abandoned her now, leaving two children in the hands of someone who lacks both the experience and the knowledge to offer them any real help. She knows engineering. She knows basic first aid. She knows the ins and outs of machines, and she knows the twenty-two ways in which her previous charges met their untimely ends. Only two were preventable deaths by exposure. The rest were savage takedowns that she could not bear to witness. 

The District 3 tributes tend to fall at the hands of the better-trained, bloodthirsty Careers. There isn’t much that can be done about that, outside of bracing oneself for the inevitable and hoping that maybe some well-practiced hunter from another District might be able to dispatch them before they get to you and be dispatched in turn. 

Theta becomes aware that an enormous pause has stretched between the question and the present moment, long and gaping enough to doom any answer that she gives to intense suspicion. She doesn’t know how to explain the intensity and number of thoughts and worries that plague her, nor does she wish to force that burden upon two people who are far too young to shoulder it. They do not need to know that she is underprepared to teach them. They do not need to know that Koschei has abandoned them to serve his own ends. They do not need to know that she despises Sparrow, and that despite her claims to the contrary, she is almost certain that both of them will die. 

“He was not in a fight. He fell, got a concussion, and was advised that he limit his time on his feet. He’ll be back when it’s better. Promise.” She feels the words strain beneath the weight of her doubt and the uncertainty of her own assurances, though she does her best to mask it beneath a mask of her own making.    
  
“He didn’t seem to be ill when he left this morning.” Much to Theta’s surprise, it is Rennette who speaks the correction, dark eyes burning into Theta’s own with unquestioning precision. Observant to a fault, that girl. It reminds Theta of someone else she knows, someone who ran away just to spite her.    
  
“Whatever else may be said about him, Koschei is very good at disguising his pain.”    
  
It’s true. His truth doesn’t leak as often or as willingly as Theta. His mask only ever seems to shatter in her presence, because she dared to push him a bit too far. In media appearances and in front of other people -- with the single exception of the fight the previous day -- he manages to bottle up his feelings and intentions until it is relatively safe to discharge them. She thought she was doing the same, for a while -- protecting him by playing her part in this and dropping the facade only when they were safely behind closed doors -- but he doesn’t allow her the room to be broken and uncertain. He makes demand after demand, and though he relishes in the heat of her anger, he does not stomach her grief or her doubt. It’s too  _ inconvenient _ for him. Perhaps that is why she cannot allow herself to be vulnerable, why she only sheaths her claws and hides her thorns and allows him to be her partner when she’s fallen upon the point of exhaustion or he’s pushed her to a breaking point. Peace, if indeed such a thing is possible for people like them, cannot be achieved when one member of the arrangement is suffocating, to say nothing of love. It resembles nothing of the quiet, unblemished warmth that she experienced in her youth. Loving Rose Tyler was an exercise done in the relative safety of a fireplace. Koschei is a raging inferno, as liable to burn her as bite back the night and the cold and the dangers that they carry.    
  
And yet, she felt more alive in his presence then she does now, in the chilling absence of it.    
  
Theta swipes her tongue across her lips and swallows back the thought, exercising what little control she has over her sphere of attention to wrench it back to the task at hand. The children need her. She cannot linger on thoughts of Koschei simply because she dared to compare two people she disliked and found the parallels surprisingly lacking. The fact that Sparrow has almost nothing in common with the man that she wants to so desperately hate is unsettling, as is the fact that Rennette does share behaviors with him, and she does not dare consider the implications that follow. She isn't ready to face uncomfortable truths. Her mind is too full, and her heart not loud enough to cry out in need. 

“Come on, we’re going to learn how to construct a viable shelter in a variety of habitats. You never know what kind of environments the Gamemaker might throw at you. Forests and jungles are popular, but we had a jungle last year and Ushas in particular steers away from forests. Too conventional for her, I expect…”   
  
Though the disappointment from Sparrow is almost tangible, he does not protest the nature of the lesson, and by the end of the morning, both he and Rennette have built a variety of functional, easily camouflaged structures with materials that can be easily found in any number of scenarios, and discussed the theories that are involved in basic construction in case they get thrown into a scenario so absurd that the hands-on lesson can no longer be applied. It is not as exciting or glamourous as weapons classes, but it will keep them alive for the first night, if indeed, they manage to survive until nightfall.    
  
At the end of the lesson, Rennette thanks her. Sparrow does not, but he does ask a series of questions that imply that he listened, absorbed the information, and cared enough about it to want to learn more. It may not be what the other Districts are teaching or whatever Koschei likely had slated for the day, but it is enough that she feels marginally accomplished and confident enough that when her tributes are collected for the group instruction period, she returns to the apartments, fetches a bottle of wine from the kitchens, and steals away to the District 12 penthouse to both speak with a friend and engage in some light cheating.    
  
It is a couple minutes before Yasmin Khan answers the door. Her skin glistens with a light layer of sweat that suggests she engaged in a far more strenuous period of instruction with her own tributes, but much to Theta’s relief, her gaze is clearer and her expression less ragged than it was on the first day in the Capitol.    
  
“I brought wine!” Theta declares with a broad smile that does not speak either to her heart or the nature of her visit. “Mind if I come in? No one else is here, are they?” She rocks forward ever so slightly in a poorly veiled attempt to peer past the Victor and into the rest of the room behind her. It is not particularly successful. 

Yaz meets her enthusiasm with slight confusion. Theta doesn’t blame her. Most of the days she seeks out Yaz are bad days. Days when tributes die, days when interviews go poorly, days when the past and the present conspire to close in around her so tightly that she cannot draw breath until she reaches the roof and gazes up at open sky. Unless they happen to brush shoulders at an event that goes particularly well, in a group so large that intimacy is the furthest thing from anyone’s mind, Yaz doesn’t see her on her good days. This isn’t a good day by any stretch of the imagination, but Theta is willing to pretend that it is if it means that she can gain an ally and retrieve the information that she needs to do her job competently enough that Koschei’s absence will not affect her. 

After a few seconds of hesitation, Yaz takes a step backwards, opening the door widely enough for Theta to step inside. “Yeah, you know where the stairs are by now. I’ll give a yell up if anyone comes by to look for you.”

Theta steps over the threshold with a flourish before turning on her heel and taking the next couple of paces backward, trying to maintain eye contact with Yaz while she walks. It feels a bit friendlier, that way. She’s trying to be charming. She knows she can be. After all, up until the point when Koschei deigned to propose, she managed the recent interview with Caesar well enough, and Koschei himself observed that people tend to be drawn to her, a fact that largely escaped her own notice, but in hindsight, she is  _ slightly _ inclined to believe him. 

“I wanted to talk to you, actually. Just the two of us. And the wine.”    
  
Yaz blinks twice before closing the door. “Is that allowed?” she asks warily, turning her eyes towards the ceiling, scanning for security cameras. There aren’t any cameras installed inside the apartments. Theta checks every year, armed with her sheet of interference stickers, and every year, she never has to use them. There are cameras outside of the doors, observing the people who come in and out, but there is nothing inside the apartments themselves to suggest that the occupants are being watched or overheard.    
  
“Does it matter?” Theta says breezily, taking the initiative to storm the kitchen in search of two wine glasses. She finds them in the fourth cabinet that she opens and pours Yaz a generous serving, holding it out with one hand as she beckons the young woman forward. “It’s not poisoned, I swear. Wouldn’t do that to you. We’re friends, aren’t we?”   
  
A sigh settles over the set of Yaz’s shoulders as she warily closes the space between them, accepting the glass and sniffing its contents before taking a small sip. “Are you sure no one’s listening?”   
  
“As sure as I can be. I know the makes and models of all of the cameras and microphones. Made some myself on a few days when I got bored and decided to work the factory floor to pass the time. There’s nothing inside the apartments,” she says as she pours her own glass and takes a rather sizable gulp of its contents before making a face. She forgot how much she hates wine that isn’t bubbly. Much less fun. However, she steels herself to take a second sip, and  _ almost _ succeeds in not spitting its contents back into the glass from whence it came. 

Though Yaz does not seem entirely convinced, she is reassured enough to say, “Okay. I trust you.” 

The words catch Theta off guard. She cannot think of the last time that anyone claimed to trust her. Rose, maybe, and though that relationship was beautiful while it lasted, the ending was nightmarish and tainted by death and her own stubborn mistakes. Even Koschei, despite his many words about love and his faith that she might one day stand at his side to rule the Capitol, has not expressed any sort of trust in her. Quite the opposite, actually. Whenever she dares to speak, he meets it with an immediate objection and digs his claws in, pointing out the many weaknesses and vulnerabilities he has observed in her since the day that she met. She isn’t sure that she wants Koschei to trust her, but it would be nice to not feel attacked whenever he entered a room. It would be nice if some of that passionate fire became something softer, something cloaked in stars, something more akin to the quiet way that he lulled her back to sleep the night before.    
  
It would make it easier to trust him if she knew he trusted her in return.    
  
Theta adds it to the burgeoning list of things to confront him about whenever he dares to return from his self-imposed isolation, though she is too proud to call him back herself. She will wait until he returns. She will not give him the upper hand by begging for his return, by planting the assumption that she missed him, by further fueling his speculative leaps about her love for him.    


She wants to yell at him. She wants to hold him to account for the many ways that he has subtly wronged her while portending to do the right thing. That is not the same thing as love, but it does suggest that she cares about their relationship beyond the mere concession to keep him alive. However, she doesn’t want to think about what caring about him might mean, and she is thankful that she can distract herself with wine -- as vile as it is -- and Yaz’s company.    
  
“What do you teach your tributes?” she asks, casting aside the momentary uncertainty that spawned in the wake of the expression of trust. “Koschei is indisposed, and he’s always guided them, and I don’t know what to do.”   
  
Yaz lets out a burst of laughter so sudden and unexpected that her own wine comes out her nose. “Is that all? I thought you were going to consult me about hiring an assassin or something, given how  _ Not You _ you were when you walked in here.”   
  
Theta tilts her head slightly, blonde hair trickling across her shoulder. “Do people do that?”   
  
Yaz shakes her head, an amused smile still dancing on her lips as she turns her attention back to her wine. “You’d be surprised.”   
  
Theta files that fact away. She doesn’t have the energy to chase down that line of inquiry at the moment; her mind is too busy weighing the effects of Koschei’s absence to handle anything else. “I just want to know what you teach them. Vague as you like, if cheating’s not your bag. I’m at a loss, and I need help.”   
  
“Let me find you a drink you actually like and a proper seat and we’ll talk. I stole all my lessons from District 9, you know. My predecessor wasn’t exactly forthcoming before he bit it.”    


With a drink in hand that no longer makes her gag, Theta sits and listens to Yaz for a couple of hours, asking questions and swapping whatever scattered wisdom she herself has gathered over her half-attentive years, and when she finally returns to her own floor that evening, she feels marginally more confident in her ability to see this process through without Koschei. Perhaps the warmth is feigned -- the combined efforts of both the alcohol and the illusion provided by her lingering resentments, but she desperately clings to it as if it is the only torch she’ll ever carry.    
  
How  _ disappointed _ he’s going to be when he’s found that she has succeeded and hasn’t caved into sending longing notes and pleas for his return through Romana. Just as she chooses not to think about what it might mean to care about Koschei, she chooses to ignore the fact that her mind continues to turn to him in his absence. Even when he isn’t physically present, he dominates her thoughts so thoroughly that it has washed away all lingering raccoon-related preoccupations.    
  
Her newfound confidence and persisting stubbornness carries her on their shoulders until the middle of the night, when she wakes shaking and tear-stained and wishes for nothing more than the presence of someone who understands what she’s going through, even if he sometimes wields that understanding poorly. 


	21. Chapter 21

Theta’s second day of training the tributes on her own goes about as well as one can expect from a mentor who is operating based solely on enormous levels of spite, a frantic desire to protect her charges, and the vague instructions of practices she has never observed. Theta even goes so far as to forgo her usual steadfast refusal to wield a weapon to walk the pair of children through a few sets of defensive and offensive exercises that she committed to muscle memory fifteen years ago when she was young and angry and doing everything she could to ensure that she might be able to escape the Arena alive. Back then, no one told her that dying was the less painful option. No one told her anything at all.   
  
For the most part, the Sparrow and Rennette are receptive to her teachings, however, Theta can sometimes sense their shared fear and frustration bubbling to the surface. They are inexperienced students and she is an inexperienced teacher. Her instructional style is looser than Koschei’s -- less regimented, less confident -- and as much as she avoids speaking of the change, she can feel it wearing and tearing on their spirit. The next time she sees him, she has plans to pin him against a wall and shout at him until he understands how deeply his actions against her affected the tributes. If either of them die in a way that his usual mentorship could have prevented, it’s on his conscience and his alone. She will not carry the weight of his sins in addition to her own.   
  
Theta is enormously relieved when the morning ends and she can turn Sparrow and Rennette over to the group training session. Even though that environment invites the stares and scrutiny of the tributes from the other Districts, it is the only stable resource they have left. 

She returns to the apartment in short order with the intention of bathing and settling in for a long and cleansing nap, but a quick word tossed over Romana’s shoulder paralyzes her in the middle of the hallway.   
  
“A group of men came by and left a note for you. It seems important.”   
  
Dread sinks its claws into her heart. “Koschei?” she asks, clinging to the desperate and futile hope that the situation might not be as dire as it sounds.   
  
“No.” Romana pauses, placing her book facedown in her lap and turning so that she might be able to eye Theta properly as she adds, “He’s still waiting for you to summon him, by the way. I don’t think he expected you to last the night.” Her attention drifts away again as she settles back into the comforting cushions. “Amy and I have placed bets. I suspect that I’ll win. She has a very different impression of your relationship than I do.”   
  
Theta does not dare comment lest she accidentally compromise the lie. “Should I worry?” she asks after a moment’s hesitation, speaking of the letter and not the bet.   
  
“Probably,” Romana answers, though her tone suggests nothing of the sort.   
  
Theta cannot find the will to form a reply. Her heartbeat fills her ears and worry sinks into her abdomen as she ventures down the hall and into the bedroom that she usually shares with Koschei. A letter sits on the foot of the bed, its crimson envelope and bright gold seal a stark contrast to the muted grey of the sheets. Its very presence leeches the color from her face and threatens to still the beating of her heart. It isn't Panem's seal that's cut into the golden wax, rather, a twisted and interlocking spiral that speaks to a more personal communique from a figure that she has not seen in person since the fateful night when she ruined a state dinner -- the night that Koschei claims that he saved her from execution, thus dooming them both to the engagement that haunts them now. 

She picks it up and rips it open from an edge, successfully avoiding contact with the horrid seal but nearly shredding the paper inside as a result. 

The message is short, and elegantly penned in shimmering gold ink. 

_Miss Lungbarrow,_

_Please meet me at my home at 6pm precisely. The staff has been told to expect you. Don't be late._

It is not signed. It doesn't have to be. The seal is signature enough. 

She drops it like a hot coal, and after taking a minute to poke around the apartment to make doubly sure that there are no unkind strangers lurking in closets, Theta takes a few hesitant steps into the living room and poses a chilling question to Romana, who hasn’t moved from her chosen chair. "What do you wear to a meeting with the {resident?" 

Romana's large eyes rise from the book in her hands, fixing on Theta with no small amount of worry. When she speaks, it's uncharacteristically dry, careful to avoid speaking ill of a man who very much deserves it. "Something you're willing to die in, I expect."

Theta’s nose wrinkles. “Super comforting, thanks. Mind if I write that one down?” Despite her sarcasm, she has to admit, Romana’s cavalier lack of concern does succeed in cutting some of the tension that lines her bones and seeps into her veins. Genuine worry would have only succeeded in compounding her fear to the point where it became unbearable, and though she is still anxious about both whatever horrors her meeting with the President might entail and the lingering uncertainties born from Koschei’s absence, at least she can still breathe. It’s a small thing, but it is enough to keep her tethered to this moment and the people in it.   
  
“You’re welcome.”

  
  
  


That evening, Theta digs through her closet -- full to the brim with the flashy things that Koschei commissioned from Amy -- and opts for the old grey trenchcoat that she wore for Reaping Day. It may not be an attractive garment, but it is both comforting and comfortable, and in Theta’s mind, that makes it worthy of donning for an interaction that could possibly be her last stand. Logically, she doubts that the President would summon her with something as easily disregarded as a letter if he intended to carry through on his threat of execution -- such orders are best carried out by way of handcuffs and armed peacekeepers -- but still, she cannot trust an official who presides over a society that relies solely on bloodsport to keep the peace. Such an individual must be questionably sane at _best_.

She does not say goodbye to either the tributes nor Romana when she steals out the door, and by the time she reaches the Presidential Estate, she is already late. So late, in fact, that an unbiased observer could not possibly consider it to be anything but a deliberate act of rebellion. In reality, however, it was unintentional. Without Koschei drilling a schedule into her head and nudging her out the door and on her way, she neglected to mind the clock.   
  
The butler says nothing to Theta when they open the door and guides her through the labyrinth of wood-paneled hallways, and his wordlessness succeeds in unsettling her even further. Generally, she doesn’t sit well with quiet, however, she ignores the urge to fill the silence herself. She does not doubt that every word that she says in this building will be recorded and stored somewhere for reference and future blackmail. Best not to provide them with additional ammunition.   
  
Upon reaching the study, the butler opens the door. Obediently, Theta steps over the threshold and glances back over her shoulder, awaiting some sort of instruction, but he merely closes the door with a sharp snap, leaving her trapped with the room’s only occupant. 

For an agonizing series of minutes, the President does not look at her. He stares out the window, regarding the neatly kept gardens that lie beyond its glass. In contrast to the increasingly gregarious styling that has come to dominate fashion within the Capitol, he dresses simply. His suit is dark burgundy and cleanly cut in a style that strikes Theta as being slightly out of time. One of his hands is tucked in a pocket, but the other cradles a tumbler of whiskey, and a line of gold buttons at his wrist catches the light as he raises the drink to his mouth.   
  
It is only when Theta capitulates to the rising tide of anxiety and takes a fearful step backwards that he finally turns around.   
  
“You are late.”   
  
Her tongue swipes nervously across her lips. “Time slipped away from me. Slippery thing, time. Like a fish, or --” The words die in her throat as the President lifts his eyes to hers. His gaze is so hard, cruel, and unforgiving that it almost seems inhuman. She had once assumed that Koschei’s gaze was the same, but she is now all too aware of the softness that sits beneath it. The President, however, is a man incapable of kindness. He is older than this state and most of the people in it, older than the Games, old enough to know that there had once been an order before this one, that there had once been a time when children were not randomly selected to die in service of the masses, and yet, he still chose to build the world in this image.   
  
Theta does not dare to guess what terrors lurk within a mind like that.   
  
“I’m not interested in your excuses, Theta,” the President says as he takes a step forward, circling around his desk and taking a set. He gestures at the chair across from him, indicating that Theta take it, however, her feet remain rooted to the carpet.   
  
Thoughts and words fail her as she attempts to redeem herself. “I wasn’t -- President Rassilon, sir, I --”   
  
He interrupts her again, this time with a wave of his hand. “I’m not interested in speaking to you unless you sit. This is a conversation meant to be held on my terms, not yours. I am going to ask you questions, you are going to answer them, and you are not allowed to pick fights. I expect the same behavior that you displayed at your recent interview with Caesar and not the behavior that we came to expect several years ago. Is that understood?”   
  
The “Yes” that leaves her lips is a hollow, aching thud of a word.   
  
Hesitantly, she crosses the room and sinks into the proffered chair. He watches her intently all the while, waiting until she is completely still before pursuing his intended line of questioning. 

“Where is Koschei Oakdown?”  
  
“I’m sorry?” Theta says, making no effort to hide her surprise. She doesn’t know what she expected to be the subject of this summons, but she certainly never considered that it might be Koschei’s vanishment. After all, he left of his own accord, and hasn’t been gone for long at all. She assumed that he was slinking around at someone else’s place, still attending his meetings and only refusing to have contact with her specifically. It had not occurred to her that he might have been spiteful enough to drop off the face of the planet.   
  
President Rassilon sets his drink down on the desk. “Koschei. He dropped off of our maps. Where is he?”

A sudden tide of affront washes away her previous shock. “Are you tracking us?” Perhaps she should have known that the government would continue to keep an eye on its Victors even after they left the Arena, but she had not thought that the surveillance was both detailed and thorough enough to catch what should have been nothing more than a small blip on its radar. For a moment, she wonders if Koschei knew that his choice to leave would bring scrutiny down upon her. She may have labored under the delusion of freedom and privacy, but it is not outside the realm of possibility that Koschei discovered this a long time ago. He has always been more observant than she is, more interested in the world that surrounds them and the games staged by those who rule it. 

“We have an interest in guarding our assets, yes, and it is enormously concerning when one disappears, especially when that asset is tied to a woman known to be an active liability.” Rassilon’s stare bores into her as he traces an idle finger over the point of a letter opener in a clear suggestion.

Theta’s eyes flash. “I didn't murder Koschei, if that’s what you’re asking.” 

Amusement curls his lips. “I never said that you did, though it’s interesting that that’s where your mind went.”  
  
“I’m not a murderer.”   
  
“Really?” The President’s hand wanders towards a small remote, and he presses a single button before leaning back in his chair with his hands folded over his chest. An image fills the air between them, projected by an unseen device built into the surface of the desk itself. Eighteen boxes fill her sphere of vision. Eighteen faces that she recognizes. Eighteen children sentenced to almost-certain death. Simultaneously, light flashes in all eighteen images, and one at a time, eighteen hearts stop.   
  
Theta’s lungs struggle to find air as her mind begins to spin, carrying her back to the moment that defines her nightmares. A flare of power, the moment where she knew her plan was going to work and _relished_ in it, then the quickness with which that fell away as electricity surged through her own body, an unseen force tossed her across the clearing, the small of her burning flesh filled her nostrils, and somewhere nearby, two people scream their last.   
  
She is only vaguely aware of the office and the man who sits within it, and all sense of time has once again slipped from her grasp. President Rassilon does not bother to draw her out of her past as it overwhelms her. He merely waits.   
  
By the time she returns to the moment, her eyes are swollen and puffy from tears that she does not remember crying. The projection has vanished, but she cannot chase its images from her mind. She has never seen the moment of death before, has never been forced to watch life leave the eyes of the many tributes that she killed, has always assumed that she would be able to avoid it forever. No one ever broadcasts her victory. For all she knew, the footage was gone.   
  
“Where is Koschei?” the President asks again.   
  
It occurs to Theta that this moment -- that this exploitation of her trauma -- was _designed_ . He pulled that footage before this meeting. He left it cued in case he needed it. He knew what her reaction to it would be, and he figured that it would make her more pliable. He was wrong.   
  
It only makes her angrier. 

She straightens, lifting her chin and eyeing him with an intensity that suggests she's willing to throw the first punch. "I don't know."

A laugh spins past his lips, but there is no mirth in it. "I know everything, Theta. I know that you visited Yasmin Khan. I know that you were responsible for Koschei's recent injuries. I know you steal away to the roof to tempt fate. I know you haven't been doing your job for years. I know that you keep a spare bedroom open even though you know that anyone who dared occupy it would be in immediate danger should you slip, and I know that you know that Koschei loves you. So come on, girl, where is he and what is he hiding?"   
  
“I don’t know,” she repeats. 

Rassilon leans forward, resting his forearms on the desk between them. "You're lying."

"I'm not. We fought. He stormed out. He doesn’t want me to know where he is.” Though she is loath to share the details of her personal life with a man this nefarious, in this instance, the truth is her best defense. She did nothing to Koschei, and she knows nothing of his whereabouts. She cannot give the President what he wants. 

The mention of a fight piques Rassilon’s interest. "What did you fight over? I was under the impression that you were happily engaged." His words drip with malice, relishing in his knowledge of the uncomfortable arrangement in which he has placed the pair of Victors from District 4. Theta feels like a child being reprimanded by a particularly cruel parent for perceived misdeeds. 

Once again, her words sketch the approximate outline of the truth. "He offered affections and I did not return them."

The President’s tongue tuts disapprovingly against the roof of his mouth. His cold gaze turns skyward as he considers the situation at hand, weaving it into a plan that best suits his agenda. After half an age, his eyes finally turn back to her, shining with a glee that chills Theta to her very core. “When I proposed an engagement between the two of you, I intended that it be an appropriately tepid arrangement. No fire, no passion, no real care. If Koschei is angry, that means that there is fire, Theta, and we can’t have that, can we? Fire leaves people burned. Fire means that lies get discovered and people die. You can make him miserable if you want to, that would be lovely, but you have to play along with his need for affection enough that misery is all that it is. I _cannot_ have him angry, is that clear?”   
  
The sheer impossibility of the task daunts her. “I --”   
  
He senses her protests and cuts it off before she can finish voicing it. “Give him enough of what he wants to keep him here, Theta. I don’t want him lurking in alleys and plotting revenge. I want Koschei at your side at all times, and if that means giving him what he wants, I want you to do that. Sometimes Manipulate him. Use him for your own pleasure and give no thought to his if you want to, but I don’t want him running amuck because you can’t play nice long enough to keep him leashed.”   
  
The specific nature of his wording stirs something in her recent memory, but try as she might, she cannot seem to place it. “I don’t --”   
  
He interrupts her again. “If you don’t know how, I can always make arrangements for someone to teach you. Such a shame we never had our hands on a way to convince you to cooperate with those duties earlier in your career. Always tragic when a Tribute with no family and no friends to threaten rises to the top. So many disappointed clients are left _wanting_ . There must be quite the list by now, and it would not be difficult to find.”   
  
The threat stills her tongue, and for a moment, she feels like she is made of nothing but weightless, buoyant, overwhelming fear.   
  
“I think we’re done here,” the President says with a too-white flash of a smile. He extends a hand to shake. Theta does not take it.   
  
It takes her a moment to summon up enough rage to speak. “Yeah, I think we are,” she says as she stands and turns her back on him, stalking out of the room.   
  
“I forgot to ask,” Rassilon says after her, “Did he give you a way to contact him?”   
  
The words slam into her back one after another, threatening to strike her down, but she does not stumble.   
  
“No,” she lies.   
  
She slams the door behind her as she leaves.


	22. Chapter 22

Theta isn’t brave enough to contact Koschei.   
  
She doesn’t even dare to meet Romana’s gaze when she reenters the apartment, keeping the hood of her coat pulled tightly over her face and ignoring the quick “How did it go?” that gets tossed in her direction. Her hurried strides carry her to her bedroom, and she locks the door behind her in a futile attempt to keep the rest of the world at bay. The world has always been a hostile place, but somehow, the danger feels more immediate than it ever has before. It lurks in every shadow in her bedroom, in every device where a hidden camera might be nestled, behind every door where someone might be listening. She may have accepted the engagement with Koschei because of a threat, but those were half-glimpsed shadows delivered indirectly. There is something fundamentally more earth-shattering about having the most powerful man in Panem tell her how willing he is to destroy her if she doesn’t follow through on his requests. 

She doesn’t know what to do, but doing nothing keeps both her and Koschei safe. He is better off outside of the government’s watchful eyes, and she is better off alone. She cannot hurt anyone if she doesn’t allow them to be a part of her life. No one needs to know the horrible suggestions that Rassilon spun in her ears, or the horrors that he subjected her to.    
  
For two days, she hides away in her bedroom, emerging for only a handful of hours each morning to walk the tributes through their required training. If Sparrow and Rennette notice the stark change in her behavior, they choose not to comment on it, a fact for which Theta is profoundly grateful. She doesn’t want to think up more lies to cover up the truths that she is not allowed to share. Maybe if one of them survives this, they will understand the complications of navigating this world as a victor.    
  
On the evening of the second day, Amy storms into Theta’s bedroom without permission or invitation. “Alright you, that’s enough grumpus-ing about for one week, don’t you think?”    
  
Theta springs to her feet in alarm, fully prepared to spew an entire library's worth of excuses that might buy her enough pity and sympathy to bargain for a couple more days of space. She doesn’t want anyone else getting close to her. Having friends means being surrounded by possible targets to be used and exploited as Rassilon sees fit -- he implied as much during their meeting -- and she is not willing to drag anyone else into the hell that has come to define her and Koschei’s lives. Amy and Romana both deserve better.    
  
“Have you ever heard of knocking? I could have been changing, I could have been --”   
  
“Wallowing in self-pity?” Amy fills in the blank with a derisive sniff and a pointed raise of her eyebrows. “Come on, the world keeps moving, and you ought to move along with it. Otherwise you get left behind.”   
  
Under her breath, Theta mutters something about being perfectly fine with being left behind, but Amy either doesn’t hear or doesn’t acknowledge it, and instead turns her attention to the closet. She shuffles through the clothes within -- bypassing anything that belongs to Koschei and anything that wasn’t designed by her -- as she says, “There’s a party tonight. I’m going, Romana’s going, and you’re going. It’s not negotiable. I already told someone you’d be there.”    
  
Worry flutters in Theta’s chest. “Who?” She can only think of a handful of people who would want to see her outside of Amy and Romana, and only two among them have arguably decent intentions.    
  
“Not Koschei, if that’s what you're asking,” Amy replies over her shoulder as she finally settles on an outfit, pulling it free from the interminable press of clothing and hangers. “Here,” she says, setting it on the end of Theta’s bed. “You hop into the bathroom and put it on right quick, and then I’ll help you with everything else. We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, but I’m not going to let you wander out of here looking like you haven’t slept in days.”   
  
“But I  _ actually _ haven’t slept in days.”   
  
It’s a weak protest at best, and Amy rips it to pieces in a single second. “No one else needs to know that. Some secrets are best kept between friends.”   
  
A pause settles between them as they stare each other down, each daring the other to change their mind. It doesn’t last long.    
  
“Well, get a move on, will you?” Amy insists, crossing her arms over her chest and rolling her eyes. “We’re on a ticking clock, yeah?”

  
  


The dress seems to be made of shimmering rain. Theta tends to avoid skirts and dresses whenever possible, so it isn’t a garment she has ever worn before, but she would be lying if she said that she did not once spent fifteen minutes sitting cross-legged on the floor, turning the heavy-layers of fabric over in her hands as she sought to figure out exactly how the illusion worked. A sculpted shoulder piece sits at the top of one shoulder, capping a single sleeve made of clouds that shimmer like watercolors. The other sleeve is mostly sheer, marked only by an arrangement of glittering stones that both mirror and cover the forked path of her trademark scars. She is both protected and terribly exposed at the same time, and if she felt a little less like she was drowning, she might have protested the garment entirely. Today, however, she lacks the fire to fight anyone. Not Amy, not Romana, and not the President and the horrible world that he has created.   
  
Braids sit in her hair, overlapping and falling against each other and fading into curls that brush the top of her shoulders. Stray pieces are brushed with a silver powder that catches the light and mirrors the play of light that defines the dress itself. The makeup itself is simple, though Amy did insist upon an unwieldy pair of lashes cut with tiny lightning bolts. Theta is conscious of their weight with every blink, and she can see them sweep in and out of the top of her vision. It is horribly distracting, but Capitol fashion did not evolve with any degree of practicality in mind. It is meant to broadcast one’s status as an Elite, to signal that the person wearing it has no need to move or work and has enough money at their beck and call to waste it on looking ridiculous. If it didn’t help Amy, Theta would not tolerate it as often as she does.    
  
The three women step into and out of the car together -- Amy in a structured dress and jacket that speak of sunflowers and warm afternoons, Romana draped in soft and flowing pinks and reds with a tiny hat delicately perched upon her blonde hair, and Theta the personification of a summer storm. The last time Theta walked this path, she was speaking of raccoons with Koschei on a night when he caught her causing chaos and played along. Today, he is not here, the world has shifted beneath her feet, and she lacks the energy to sabotage the selfishness of others.    
  
Noise, color, and light wash over Theta as they step through the doors together. She pauses mid-step. Everything is almost indistinguishable from the way that it was the previous week, but this time, she does not put on a show and wait for eyes to turn towards the entrance. She can practically feel the ghost of Koschei’s lips at her ear and the echoes of his fingers on her neck. A shiver races through her body -- as quick and fleeting as a phantom -- and she hurries onward, breaking into a jog as she fights to catch up with Amy and Romana.   
  
There are no open tables, but a group of people draped in greens and oranges move almost as soon as it becomes obvious that the District 3 contingency is searching. Whether that is done out of reverence or fear is unclear. These days, it could be either. Her public perception has been somewhat improved in the wake of the engagement -- presumably because if the universally-adored Koschei can fall in love with her, then surely she mustn't be all that bad -- but she knows that fear is a difficult beast to tame. After all, it kept her locked in her room for days while her resolve fell to ruin.    
  
Amy and Romana slip into newly vacated chairs, however, Theta remains hovering, shifting idly from foot to foot as she asks, “Do you want me to grab drinks?”    
  
Amy reaches out a hand, resting it on Theta’s arm as she beckons for her to stay. “Later. I told her we’d meet here.”   
  
Indigence curls Theta’s lip away from her teeth. “Who,  _ exactly _ ? I’ve had enough secrets to last a lifetime. They’re heavy and they’re rotting and if we’re going to be  _ friends _ , I want you to be honest with me. Who wanted me here?”   
  
Romana and Amy exchange nervous glances, but do not answer.    
  
“Theta --” Romana starts, gesturing towards the open chair, but Theta interrupts before she can finish the thought.    
  
“Tell me who,” she demands with a small, almost childish stomp of her foot. Her voice is a bit too loud, and a couple of eyes have begun to turn in their direction, only to roam away again when they realize the source of the outburst. Theta is, after all, known for these kinds of things. When she’s not charming a crowd, she’s razing it to the ground. She does not often occupy the space between.    
  
“I did.” 

The answer comes from somewhere behind Theta, and she turns, bright green eyes searching out whoever dared to pull her away from her self-imposed isolation.    
  
Her heart sinks. 

Standing before her, short and brunette and dressed in a suit as red as death, is the current Gamemaker, Ushas Miasimia-Goria. Theta has never been particularly fond of Ushas -- in no small part due to the position that she occupies and her inherent complicity in the mass murder of children -- nor has she ever been given any indication that Ushas is fond of her. When they encounter each other at events, they often exchange little more than small nods of acknowledgement of tepid hellos. Rarely have they been drawn into actual conversations, and on the couple of occasions that they have, it has occurred in group settings, following someone else’s whims and dodging engaging with each other directly.    
  
Theta cannot imagine why Ushas might want to meet with her, but she cannot imagine that it is anything  _ good _ . For all she knows, Ushas is a member of Rassilon’s camp, sent to spy and extract information until he knows whether or not Theta intends to do his bidding and where exactly Koschei might be hiding.    
  
“Would you join me in a dance, Theta? We need to talk,” Ushas says as she extends a hand in Theta’s direction. The question itself is almost entirely dispassionate, as if disposing of a boring yet necessary bit of etiquette before soldiering onto far more interesting things.    
  
Theta stares at the hand with an enormous amount of suspicion, making no move to take it.    
  
Amusement curls the corners of Usha’s mouth. “It’s not poisonous, Theta. I have news to share, and I suspect that you want to hear it.”    
  
Theta’s tongue nervously wets her lips as she glances over her shoulder, seeking out the opinions of her friends. Amy offers a thumbs up and a small smile, and Romana merely sighs, leaning back in her chair and sweeping a vague shoo-ing gesture in Theta’s direction. 

Steeling herself with a quick breath, Theta turns back to the Gamemaker and places her hand in her own. Ushas’ hand is colder than Koschei’s -- almost clammy, despite the heat of the room and the tight press of the people within it. Theta keeps her eyes fixed on the back of the woman’s head as they weave through the crowds, fighting to keep her nerves at bay.    
  
When they find a free bit of floor, Ushas plants her feet and turns to face Theta, tugging her closer and settling into the proper posture. Every shift of the body is studied and firmly regimented -- the mark of a person who was born and raised in the excess and splendor of the Capitol -- and even when she presses their bodies closer, it feels incredibly impersonal. There’s no spark of interest or fire of passion, merely the vague and uncomfortable sense that they are navigating a series of mutual inconveniences. 

As soon as they step off, Ushas speaks.    
  
“Please collect your fiancé.” The woman’s hands are as careful as her words. Her touch on Theta’s waist is so feather-light that it barely registers through the shimmering layers of fabric, and her feet delicately navigate the space between Theta’s own as they move across the floor. It takes every ounce of Theta’s will to keep from looking over her shoulder as Ushas guides her backwards. “He’s beginning to drive me mad.”   
  


Theta's lips part in surprise, and she misses a step, stumbling as their feet collide. Ushas sniffs as she corrects the mistake, the lightness of her touch becoming slightly stricter as she corrects Theta’s course.    
  
“You know where he is?” Theta asks once she manages to find her tongue.   
  
“Unfortunately.”    
  
Theta’s mind and heart take off at a gallop. She didn’t know that Ushas and Koschei were on speaking terms, nonetheless that they were close enough that Ushas would offer him shelter in a time of need. Furthermore, if the President truly does not know where Koschei is, it means that the Gamemaker might very well be keeping secrets from the very government that she is pledged to serve. Unless, of course, no one thought to ask. Theta wouldn’t have, but Theta is full of blind spots when it comes to Koschei.    
  
“But Koschei told me to pass messages through Romana.” It’s a pointless observation, but Theta’s mind is moving so quickly and being pulled in so many different directions that she cannot seem to delineate between the important thoughts and the unimportant ones. Indeed, she is barely aware of their steps as they move backwards, allowing trust, instinct, and Ushas’ unfailing lead to carry her.    
  
“Romana is available to you in the middle of the night. I am not.” The words tread the fine line between boredom and irritation. Their legs cross as they navigate the turn at the corner of the floor before Ushas continues. “He refuses to see reason and it is horribly distracting to listen to him pine for hours on end. The Games are on the horizon, and I would like you to speak with him. I doubt you have to succumb to whatever demands he might have made. I’ll carry a message if you like, or you can give it to Romana to give to me if that makes you more comfortable. I just want him out of my way.”   
  
Theta presses her tongue against her teeth as she listens, struggling to hang onto every word. Between the distractions of their current environment and the turmoil of her own thoughts, attention is difficult, but she manages well enough to comprehend the general outline of the situation. “I don’t know if I can.”   
  
Ushas sighs. “You have a ring on your finger. He needs to be your problem, and not mine.”    
  
Anger flits across Theta’s expression, but she does not dare to share it aloud. She has a ring because she would rather suffer than allow more blood to stain her hands. She has a ring because she was offered the opportunity to save lives or condemn them and she took it. Her ring was not a promise to shoulder someone else’s burdens or carry them in both sickness and in health.    
  
However, it suddenly occurs to her that her reticence to contact him is borne not only from her natural stubbornness, but from a fearful need to save him from the President’s wrath. She lied on his behalf in Rassilon’s study. She separated herself from her friends not only out of fear for them, but out of fear of what she might do to endanger him. She thought that doing nothing was the only thing that would keep them safe.    
  
She still thinks that doing nothing is the only thing that will keep them safe.    
  
“You don’t understand, I --”   
  
Ushas’ eyes widen slightly at the sight of something behind Theta, and Theta’s thought dies before she can finish it -- drowned by a sudden wave of confusion.    
  
Feet stop and hands fall away, and Theta takes a confused step backwards as her lips wrap around a question. She doesn’t get a chance to ask it before she collides with another body. Warm hands wrap around her hips and turn her around as the familiar smell of peppermint breaks across her nose.    
  
Green eyes meet brown ones -- soft and hard and hurt all at the same time.    
  
“Heard you might’ve missed me. Can’t blame you, really,” Koschei says, lips hitched in a self-satisfied smirk.    
  
All at once, Theta forgets three things. She forgets how to breathe, she forgets that they are surrounded by witnesses, and she forgets that just a moment ago, she was determined to protect him.   
  
She raises a hand and slaps Koschei across the cheek. Hard. 


	23. Chapter 23

Dozens of eyes turn to the pair of victors. A hush falls over the crowd. Theta's cheeks flush with anger and embarrassment and the heat of that fire that Koschei always seems to spark. She ought to turn on her heel and stalk away -- to condemn him to the same uncertainty that he put her through -- but she can't seem to lift her feet from the floor or tear her gaze away from him. 

Koschei's fingers find the reddening patch on his cheek as a laugh spins from his lips -- disbelieving and mischievous and completely genuine all at the same time. After a moment, the silence of the room seems to sink in, his eyes dart sideways, and she can see an idea flicker across his face. 

She doesn't have time to anticipate it, nor does she think that she would have been capable of rallying movement if she did. 

He grasps her face in both hands, allowing a thumb to stray across her mouth as he leans in for a kiss. However, his lips never touch hers. They touch his hand and his hand alone. It's a magic trick performed for the benefit of their rapt audience, distracting them from the slap that occurred mere seconds ago, and it works. 

Murmured reactions flutter across the colorful crowd as they return to their previous activities, but for a fleeting moment, Theta feels a vague sense of disappointment infringe upon her rage. She cannot shake the idea that this would all be a tiny bit less stressful if they finally crossed that boundary. They will have to kiss one of these days. The public or Caesar or President will demand it, and those audiences will never hear any arguments to the contrary. Perhaps she should have dared to kiss him on the train, when she breached his space and breathed his air and thought about how easy it would be to press her lips to his. She has a chance to do it now -- to throw herself at him and rewrite the tension between them -- but Rassilon’s threats sit in her stomach like stones and hundreds of voices buzz in her ears and she cannot seem to muster the courage.   
  
Her uncertainty writes itself across her face, and Koschei takes a step back, allowing his hands to fall away. In their absence, the air feels harsher and a chill trespasses across her skin, washing away the lingering remnants of her anger and leaving her with the hollow echo of unfulfillment.  
  
“What do you need?” There’s genuine concern there, despite the cold arrogance of his opening line and the overemotional smack of her response.  
  
It should be an easy question. Ever since Reaping Day, she’s spent her time languishing over things she wants and can never have, but her lips part and her tongue hovers behind her teeth and she can’t seem to manage to string together a satisfactory answer. As much as she hates to admit it, her needs are different than they were a week ago. She’s stopped gazing longingly over the edges of rooftops and at the street that races below their bedroom window. She is full of dread and fear and worry, but she’s stopped passively positioning herself in front of death. She wants to live, she wants the people around her to live, but that means that she needs to start looking towards the future. She doesn’t know how to do that.

The noisy bustle of the crowd and the music dominate her senses to the point where she is no longer capable of coherent thought, nonetheless coherent _feeling_ . “I..I need to get out of here.”  
  
Relief shines in Koschei’s eyes as he lifts his chin to make eye contact with someone behind her, presumably Ushas, who up to this moment, Theta completely forgot about. He nods in response to some unseen gesture or unheard word before turning his attention back to Theta. “With witnesses or without them?” Not even the pressure of his mask can keep the amusement from the question.  
  
Finally, a question that she can answer. 

“Without.”  
  
Koschei wets his lips before saying, “I know a place. Come on.” He extends a hand towards Theta, and after a couple seconds of hesitation, she takes it. He pulls her along as he weaves through the crowd, as if this is a dance that he’s done dozens of times before, and she follows in his wake. People part for Koschei in a way they never part for her, gazes full of quiet longing and poorly tempered reverence. She is certain that if an expression like that ever dared settle upon her own face, he would never let her live it down, but he gives none of these people so much as a passing glance as he walks by. He doesn’t look back at her either, but when her fingers loosen their grip ever so slightly, he slows down to keep her close, as if he’s afraid that if they’re parted again, however briefly, there might be no further hope at reunion.  
  
No doubt Koschei, too, profoundly felt every second of their separation, though she doubts that they were plagued by the same thoughts. She may no longer hold hatred for him, and they may occupy a shared position within the strict confines of the President’s directive, but they are still very different people.  
  
Koschei opens a side door and tugs Theta down a hallway. Though Theta has noticed the doors that line the event space before, she has never been tempted to wander through one and see what lies beyond. Her interests have always been fixed on the spaces with people in them and not those without. Halfway down the corridor, he twists the knob on a second door and finally lets go of Theta’s hand as he holds it open, waiting for her to step past him. His eyes drop to the floor as he shifts his weight nervously from foot-to-foot, and her shoulder brushes against him as she walks by.  
  
It’s a relatively small room, dominated by darkness and a single, neatly-made bed. Theta sits upon that bed almost immediately, relieved to be free of the sensory overload. Dealing with Koschei is, in and of itself, a _stressor_ , however, it’s much more manageable when handled in an environment where she can think and breathe and listen.  
  
Koschei, on the other hand, does not join her. Instead, he heads towards a panel set into the wall and presses into it with the pad of his thumb. The room is suddenly awash with artificial sunlight as a field sways along the edges of the walls. Theta winces at the sudden light and he keeps cycling through the options. Crashing waves, quietly crackling fires, storm-battered windows, filtered forest lights, and a bustling street are all dismissed almost immediately, but then darkness returns and a hundred stars spread across the walls and ceilings. Koschei’s fingers hesitate over the controls, but after a moment of careful consideration, he keeps it.  
  
He turns his back towards the door and begins to undo the buttons on his jacket. “It gets hot in here quickly,” he says by way of explanation when he catches Theta looking at him with no small amount of worry. Once free of the jacket, he tosses it onto the bed beside her and leans back against the wall. A cluster of stars crown his head in an unholy halo. He shifts slightly as he tries to get comfortable, waistcoat shimmering in the lowlight, and she recognizes its shift. It’s the same one that she stole several days ago. 

His stillness doesn’t last long, because he pushes himself away from the wall rather suddenly. His eyes scrape across the ceiling, looking for something. Theta is about to ask what he could possibly be searching for when he says, “Do you have any of those --” His hand sweeps the air beside his head, searching for the right word. He doesn’t find it. “-- _Things_ you use on the cameras?” 

Theta shakes her head. This dress doesn’t have pockets, and she has not had the energy to seek out cameras and disrupt them recently. The camera outside of their apartment has remained completely untouched for three days, which is a new record. Will had been in short supply until Koschei appeared with a smirk and a bad idea. She isn’t quite sure how it happened, but somewhere along the line, she got tangled up in him so thoroughly that he possesses the power to shift her very mood simply by _existing_ . She doesn’t like it, just as he doesn’t care for private conversations being recorded.  
  
Genuine surprise edges into Koschei’s voice as he says, “ _Really_?” 

Theta’s shoulders rise in a half-hearted shrug before settling back into a slouch. “Don’t usually worry about surveillance at parties. It comes with the territory. Plus, this dress doesn’t have pockets. I’ve got to sit Amy down for a chat about pockets.”  
  
One of his hands finds his chin, running across the short fibers of his beard as he considers the situation, eyes fixed upon a single camera in the corner. “How quickly can you dismantle one with whatever you have?”  
  
She shrugs again as her gaze follows his own. It is a simple enough camera. Basic model. She has taken them apart and put them together a hundred times before, but it’s a bit harder to do without the proper tools. “Ten minutes. Though if you can manage to untangle one of the pins that’s digging into my scalp, I can make it a snappy two.”   
  
Koschei’s eyebrows lift. “Why can’t you get it yourself?”  
  
“Can’t see.” Theta kicks off her shoes and scoots further back onto the bed, curling her legs underneath her as she turns her back to him. “Come on, there’s about forty of them. Throw a rock and you’re bound to hit one.”  
  
She hears his footsteps pad on the floor as he closes the space between them. The bed shifts beneath his weight, and after a pause that stretches on for so long that she is about to turn around and inquire as to whether or not he’s okay, his slightly shaking hands begin to feel around the braids, searching for one of the hidden pins. It doesn’t take him long to stumble across one, however, it does take him an eternity to slide it free. When he finally manages, she stretches her waiting palm behind her, and he deposits the small piece of metal into it.  
  
“Right then. Here we go.” Theta says as she closes her fingers and gathers her skirts. It takes her a couple minutes to navigate the heavy fabrics of the dress successfully enough to stand on the bed. She’s only barely tall enough to reach the camera without removing it from the ceiling altogether, but her fingers can navigate the circuitry by memory. She doesn’t need to see it.  
  
The promised two minutes later, she collapses back upon the bed with a victorious smile, holding a microchip between her thumb and forefinger. “Done. No one can see us. No one can hear us. It’s just you and me.”  
  
Koschei leans over to pluck the chip from her grasp and tucks it away in his pocket before straightening back into a seated position. “I’ve provided you with a room with no witnesses, now it’s your turn to say whatever it is you couldn’t say out there.”  
  
Her nose wrinkles, and she rolls over, propping herself up on a scarred and rhinestoned elbow. “I don’t recall promising to say anything. Maybe I just wanted a safe place to commit a murder, since, you know, I’m apparently a person who holds weapons now.” 

Irritation bristles beneath the words. It isn’t quite the same as the anger that fled in the face of the faux kiss, but it snaps and crackles like kindling. Their conversations never seem to end well. One or the other of them always _breaks_ . They both harbor reserves of near-infinite rage -- born from and honed by a life of trauma. Even if you approach their interactions with kind intentions and an open-mind -- which Theta, in particular, _rarely_ does -- it’s easy to step on toes and steer towards the wrong subject and set the entire affair ablaze. She doesn’t think that Rassilon considered that particular reality when he designed the match. Fire feeds fire, and neither of them are likely to dampen the other.  
  
He glances down and over at her, meeting her with anger with vague, twisting amusement. “If you really had murder on the brain, I would’ve expected a closed fist and not an open hand. You would have done more damage that way.”  
  
“With my luck, I would’ve broken my own hand,” she grumbles, rolling onto her back, tearing her gaze away from him, and looking up at the galaxy that spans the ceiling. The plush mattress of the bed cradles her back, but it does nothing to offset the pinch of pins in her hair. If she was capable of taking them out herself, she would, but the last time she tried, she got frustrated and took a pair of scissors to the entire affair. Amy berated her for weeks after that, and she has no desire to repeat the experience.  
  
“Give me your hand, love.”  
  
Without looking at him or bothering to push herself back into a seated position, she lifts her arm. He takes her hand and gently guides her fingers into a fist. “Keep your thumb outside, don’t bend your wrist, and hit the target with your first two knuckles. Easy enough to avoid a break that way.” His touch lingers longer than it has to, the pads of his fingers tracing the contours of her hand. Theta pretends not to notice, catching a quietly contented sigh before it has a chance to spin off her lips and replacing it with a thought.  
  
“Speaking of lessons, the children asked about you.”  
  
“Not as stupid as they normally come, are they?" She can almost hear the faint buzz of praise in the words. "What did you say?”  
  
“I said that you had a concussion.” Almost unconsciously, her eyes flick to the fading cut on his forehead. As soon as he catches her stare, he turns his face to hide it. He finally drops her hand, but his fingers walk up her arm, idly tracing the path of the rhinestones that run along her electrocution scars. If he was anyone else, she would have recoiled, but he’s seen her scars before, and he has never once commented on them. He has never once asked what that moment felt like, or wondered why she is so insistent on keeping them covered. It is the sort of quiet understanding that often passes by unappreciated, but lately, she’s taken to clinging to the small kindnesses that she’s never bothered to notice before.  
  
“Did they believe you?”  
  
“No. It’s hard to believe me when I don’t believe me.” Despite a moderately convincing performance on Caesar’s show on their first day in the Capitol, she has never been a particularly good liar. Even then, she only managed it by burying the lie in so many truths that it was hard to stumble over it. She did not have the benefit of doing that to cover Koschei’s disappearance. The move was too sudden, too specific, too difficult to sell with anything other than absolute honesty, and they can never be allowed to know the nature of this arrangement. Once one person discovers the truth, it will spread like wildfire. The people of the Capitol are naturally inclined towards gossip.  
  
“Terribly easy to believe you when you do, though.” A fond smile settles across his face, even as he adds. “I _hate_ that."

"Why?"

He looks away, fixing his attention on the far wall, but his fingers continue to idly run the length of her arm. "Because I can't replicate it. I've tried. Half the tools in my arsenal are things I borrowed from you."

Theta scoffs. “Not the disappearing.”  
  
“No. That was all me.” He pauses for a moment. Brown eyes flick up towards the dead camera and his free hand taps the chip in his pocket before he is brave enough to continue the thought. “And Ushas, too. I can’t take credit for her resources.” 

Silence stretches between them as she breathes. A thought itches at the back of her mind -- the incongruency of his pride in his actions and the very real toll that they wear upon the people around them -- and she pulls her arm away from him and rolls back onto her side, green eyes skating over his starlit features as she remarks, “It wasn’t fair, you know.”  
  
A muscle tenses in his jaw. “The world’s not fair, Theta. You’re going to have to be more specific.”  
  
When she was alone in their bedroom for those long days, she composed a thoughtful list of all the accusations that she intended to levy at him, accompanied by a list of consequences that his mistakes wrought both upon her and upon the other members of their District’s contingency. However, when faced with the reality of sharing them, fluster captures her tongue and her mind, and she is no longer capable of articulating her woes with any tangible degree of eloquence. “Leaving the tributes to fend for themselves to spite me. Issuing ultimatums. Ratcheting up expectations to the endgame when I’ve barely managed to get my head around the opening salvos. I don’t even have a chance to pause before you start breathing down my neck with some new proposition.”  
  
A sigh trickles past his lips as his eyes fall back to her -- pained and unreadable. “In all honesty, Theta, if I let things run at your pace, it would take another fifteen years to see any change. We don’t have that kind of time at our disposal.”  
  
Her voice rises as her free hand empathically gestures against the empty air, seeking to drive every point home. “So change your plans so that we do! Or just demand less. Love, rebellion, regime changes -- those are big asks, Koschei, and I’m not ready for them. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for them.”  
  
A wall of silence falls between them -- heavy, dark, and completely impenetrable. It is so gaping and absolute that it sends panic rising to the back of her throat. Perhaps this was not the time for honesty. Perhaps she should have waited until the wounds began to close and life began to settle back into something that resembled normalcy, but there is no normal for them. Once his disappearance fades, they will have to face the Games and the sponsor negotiations that surround them. They will have to mourn at least one fallen tribute, and then, someday, they will return home. Home won’t even be normal. That, too, will be taken from her as she continues to labor under her half of this agreement, sharing a house with him as they continue to _lie_ for the rest of their lives. In love or otherwise, there is no happy ending for this. Koschei is right. The world is unfair and mercilessly cruel.  
  
She is about to backpedal on her statement when he poses a dangerously soft-spoken question, “You don’t get it, do you?” 

Anger and frustration flicker. “How am I supposed to get it? You don’t tell me anything except whatever you think I should be thinking regardless of whether or not it’s true. If you gave me the tools to think and feel for myself, maybe I’d come round, but if you’re just going to play me like a pawn, I’m going to keep digging my heels in. Feels an awful lot like being a tribute, the way you’ve been herding me about. It’s like I’m being shoved around on some gameboard I can’t see, and no one ever asks for my input. Maybe sometimes your moves are right, or close enough to it to count for something, but that doesn’t mean anything if you’re not letting me be my own person.”  
  
His gaze hardens as his chin lifts. It is a fully defensive posture -- the response of a man who has not considered the full ramifications of his actions, or how they might be perceived by a person who is not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. “You’ve been thinking about this.”  
  
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.” Two days languishing on the floor in silence with threats ringing in her ears, to be exact   
  
Koschei is careful with both his words and his tone as he crafts a reply. “I can’t tell you the details of the plan until I know that you’re willing to play. There are too many people in the balance. I’ve been building this web for years, and I am not going to allow your wavering sensibilities to put it at stake. The moment you say the word, it’s all yours, but I’m not putting it at risk before them. I’ve fought too long and too hard to lose it by being a lovestruck fool. I want you to work alongside me, Theta, but I am not willing to sacrifice my work for you. I’ve come too far to throw it away.”  
  
“Your plan…” Theta trails off as her mind strings together the bits and pieces of information that she has learned, writing constellations between the stars. The President said he didn’t want you angry. ”  
  
His eyes flash and nostrils flare as he turns his head. “I suspected as much.”  
  
Curiosity stirs her tongue as she presses forward. “How much does he know?”  
  
“Precious little. He caught me talking to the wrong person once and it set off alarm bells. If he knew the project progressed as far as it has, he would’ve locked me in a cell and thrown away the key instead of forcing us into a marriage. No doubt he thinks that you’re a suitable distraction to keep me busy for a while.” Koschei fades into pensive silence again, though this one is less oppressive and threatening than the last. “Did he ask you to please me or make me miserable?”  
  
Theta’s fingers twitch as she says, “Both.”  
  
He may be a bastard, but she owes him the truth.  
  
A wry smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “Little did he know that you already align with his agenda.”  
  
With a groan, Theta rolls over to face the ceiling. She doesn’t know why she bothers to tell him the truth if he’s just going to mock her with it, and her next question is appropriately vindictive. “Why didn’t you kiss me out there if it bothers you so much?”  
  
“I didn’t think you wanted me to.”  
  
Eyebrows contract towards the center of her forehead. “When has that ever stopped you from doing anything?”  
  
“ _Constantly_ .” The word verges on a purr, and she is intensely grateful that she is not looking at him. She does not think that she would be able weather whatever expression might accompany _that_ thought spoken in _that_ tone.  
  
It takes her a moment to collect herself enough to speak, and even then, her tongue is too sharp for the situation, broadcasting her guilt and shame and the heat creeping across her skin. “Why?” 

“Because it doesn’t mean anything otherwise. Partnerships interest me, but heartless carnal exchanges do not. I’ve had enough of those to last a lifetime. I’m ready to move on.” Koschei’s head tilts as he moves his hand to her abdomen, running his fingers over the fabric with the same absentminded, idle energy with which he caressed the stones that shelter her scares. Even alone, away from the pressures of the crowd and free from the confines of his mask, he is still a restless fidgeter.“What interests you?”  
  
Heat runs across Theta’s skin, and her breath catches in her chest. “I don’t know.”  
  
“That’s a coward’s answer, love.”  
  
Her mouth tightens into a tight line as an indignant huff fills her cheeks. In this world, lending voice to the things that you value often means putting those things at risk. Families and friends get used as leverage. Career prospects are kept at arm’s length and continually denied. Homes are moved and valuables are snatched as soon as you dare to put a toe out of line. Her poor luck turned fortunate when it meant that she had nothing and no one for President Rassilon to ravage when she refused to cooperate in the vein of other victors, and now that she has desires and goals and a circle of friends, she is horribly, terribly afraid of cursing them by admitting them aloud.  
  
But Koschei is not working for the President. He is working against him, and eventually, she rallies the will to admit to three things and no others,“Keeping the tributes alive. Not dying. Escaping from all of this someday.”  
  
It’s not much, but Koschei grins so brightly that it almost seems as if the sun itself has trespassed upon their room of stars. “Some might call that progress, Theta.”  
  
She grumbles and averts her gaze, shifting her weight against the cushions. “Don’t go running around taking credit.”  
  
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”  
  
“Liar.” Despite her best intentions, a smile slips through her guard.  
  
“Maybe.” Koschei’s fingers tap the beat of the answers against the hollow of Theta’s ribcage, and she finally swings herself up into a seated position, meeting him at his level, like equals.  
  
Doubt flutters in her stare and flirts with the set of her lips as she asks, “Should we go back?”  
  
Disappointment scribes itself across Koschei’s face, and for the first time, it occurs to Theta that they have never managed to speak this long. Not in private, not in public, not while operating under Caesar's guiding hand or Romana’s watchful eyes. Rage always cuts them short, but rage fled in the beginning, chased away by curiosity and the comforting exchange of secrets.  
  
“Do you want to?” he asks, a note of wariness lurking beneath the words.  
  
For a faltering moment, Theta is tempted to resolve once more into uncertainties and allow him to decide for them both, but by her own admission, she doesn’t want to live like that anymore. She is done treading water in his wake. “Yes.”  
  
Koschei nods. “I’m going to need something from you, then.”  
  
“I’m sorry?” In her mind, she has given him more than enough. She may not have given him her heart, but she handed him trust and truth and thought. She doesn’t know what else she has left to offer.  
  
Koschei’s neck cranes upward as he stares towards the ceiling and that telltale muscle in his jaw tightens again, but when he speaks, he masks the effort from the voice. “We can’t disappear from a party and come back looking like we didn’t sleep together. People will talk.”  
  
A dismissive _tsk_ slithers past Theta’s teeth. “I slapped you. They’re already talking.”  
  
Twin palms turn upward as he shrugs. “I already fixed that, but I can do more if you let me. Two birds, one stone.”  
  
“How?” As she speaks, her eyes narrow with untamed suspicion. She knows where this is most likely headed, but she wants to hear him admit it. If he can needle her without reprieve, then she is allowed to back him into corners and deny him his theatrics. 

He rolls his eyes and runs a hand across his forehead, wiping away an invisible line of sweat.“Your neck, please, Theta. I’ll be nice.”  
  
It is exactly what she expected him to say. Nerves flutter in her belly as she moves closer to him. He brushes her stray curls back over her shoulder as he eyes her neck, running a thumb across her skin as he considers the best possible placement for a love bite -- somewhere prominent enough that it will be noticeable to the average passerby, but haphazard enough that it looks like an accident.  
  
After an agonizing series of minutes, Kochei leans forward and grazes his teeth across Theta’s skin before setting to work, raising goosebumps and sending a shiver throughout her body. She likes it, and she hates that she likes it. The thought of the inevitable future floats back to the front of her mind, the beginnings of a moan gather somewhere deep in her lungs. It does not quite manage to reach her lips, but it buzzes in her throat before it dies.  
  
He must have felt it, because when he pauses for breath, he comments, "You can be vocal, you know. In fact, I'd prefer it. Generally speaking, enjoyment makes this whole exercise significantly less awkward." 

Theta’s neck and cheeks flush scarlet, and though her shame keeps her voice at bay, she raises a hand and curls her fingers in his hair.   
  
When he’s done, he lifts his head and his mint-laden breath washes cool across her face. Their eyes meet for a single heartbeat before turning to each other’s lips, contemplating the possibility of a kiss that never comes.  
  
An unsettling sense of failure cleaves the air between them, harsh as a blade. Koschei's expression shifts as he beings to gather up his true nature and slip that inexorably frustrating mask back into place. He straightens and crosses over to the wall where he started, picking up his jacket on the way and checking his watch. “Give that a few minutes to come to the surface and then we can leave.”  
  
Fear and doubt tighten Theta’s chest, and she dares to ask one final question before they retreat from the stars and return to the neon horrors of Panem. “Why me?” 

Most disappointingly, the answer is spoken from behind the mask. “Why not?”


	24. Chapter 24

The morning sunlight slips into their bedroom uninvited, gilding Theta and Koschei’s shared disgrace with warm, golden light. After the love bite, they engaged in no further physical indiscretions, however, their overactive nightmares once again chased them into the other’s territory until they became a tangle of limbs and scattered contact. Most mornings, Theta tends to flee the bed first, but during the course of this particular night, Koschei rolled onto her arm, pinning it beneath his side, forcing her to either wake him or wait in order to leave.   
  
She chooses to wait, and her mind wanders back towards the previous night.   
  
The rest of the party had not gone particularly well. Once free of the comforting veil of privacy and darkness, the unforgiving chill of reality seeped back into Theta’s skin, making her skittish. She met every wandering gaze with an undue amount of suspicion, and snapped at a person who was merely trying to do their job. It compounded when they reunited with Romana and Amy.   
  
Upon catching sight of the fresh and mottled bruising on Theta’s neck, Romana -- ever the steadfast and stalwart professional -- made no direct comment, however, she immediately flagged down a passing server and downed an entire glass of champagne in one fell swoop. Amy did not even make an attempt to be tactful and immediately launched into an uninterrupted onslaught of nosy questions. Theta heard the entire tirade but listened to none of it, forcing Koschei to fend for them both.   
  
The only positive was that she did not bury herself in an unending font of champagne, and thus, freed herself from the oppressive weight of the hangover that plagued her the last time they dared to engage with society. Let no one say that she doesn’t occasionally manage to learn from her mistakes.   
  
After a few agonizing minutes, Koschei shifts. Seizing upon the opportunity, she breaks the silence with a quiet, “Do you mind?” Though it is not an unkind greeting, it is not an exceptionally kind one either. Perhaps she should have tacked on a ‘good morning’ or a ‘please’ for good measure, but the thought occurs late enough that it seems silly to try to rectify the oversight.   
  
His eyelids crack open, unfocused and heavy with sleep. “What is it?”   
  
“Arm. You’re on it.” The words jostle for space in her mouth and on her tongue.   
  
A disappointed groan rises in his throat as Koschei gathers enough will to move. It takes a couple of minutes of concentrated effort. They have not been sharing a room for long, but it has already become abundantly clear that he is not a morning person. His mask wavers in the mornings. His persona takes effort to put on and effort to maintain, and morning squabbles that end in disappearances notwithstanding, she thinks she likes the disagreeable bitterness better than the smooth, feigned, manic charm that defines his afternoons.   
  
Once her arm is free, Theta snatches it back with such force that she falls off the bed entirely, hitting the floor in a blow that’s only softened by the sheets that she dragged down with her.   
  
“ _Ow_ .” The sound is soft enough that she assumes he will neither hear nor care, but he’s upon her in seconds, crouching on the floor and eying her with an intensity that has entirely escaped the suffocating weariness of the morning.   
  
“Need a hand?”   
  
His concern slips beneath her skin, sending a whispered chill racing down her spine, and she stares at him blankly before shoving him aside. “No. I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be? Children fall out of beds all the time. I’ve lived through worse. Lived through worse _alone_ , for good measure. Not that anyone’s keeping score.”   
  
Her tongue is barbed, fighting to push him away from her perilously exposed nerves. Some subjects are more difficult than other subjects, and though he knows some of her story, he does not know all of it, and she does not have interest in sharing further tales of grey-tinged misery until he sees fit to do the same.   
  
Theta essentially raised herself. Her parents died when she was so young that she only managed to hold onto scattered glimpses of them in her memory -- eye colors, scents, the feeling of a hand in hers. She doesn’t know faces or heights or the sounds of their voices. She doesn’t even remember their names anymore, though they were scribed on the inside of a trunk that she once kept. She went to work at an earlier age than children were supposed to because a foreman heard her story and waived the rules. She slept in back rooms and saved money until she earned enough to carve out her own space. Was it not for the Tylers, she would not have known what family and love felt like, and even that was taken from her when death struck and doors closed. She has spoken of some of this -- of lost love and struggle -- but he has not done the same. Beyond the Games, she doesn’t know who he is or where he came from. She doesn’t know what shaped him. She knows that he has a mother that screamed during the Reaping and was arrested not long after, but she doesn’t know the context in which that happened. She doesn’t know what that means to him, and she is afraid to ask. Asking broadcasts genuine interest, and genuine interest leaves her vulnerable.   
  
Koschei’s tongue swipes across his lips as he polishes his palms. “It doesn’t have to be the worst pain anyone ever experienced to be _pain_ , love.” 

Theta scrambles to her feet in a hasty rush. “I’m fine. See? Fine. Everything’s fine.”   
  
There’s a nagging twinge in her lower back, but it’s nothing to worry about. It will pass, and she doesn’t want him to worry. She doesn’t know how to cope with worry, the same way that she doesn’t know how to craft lies of love and struggles to identify friendship when she has it.   
  
Even beyond the slippery, stubborn, sticking point of love, she doesn’t want Koschei to care this freely about her. It’s cloying and unsettling and it feeds into the thousand doubts and uncertainties that still claw at her insides. She has always been independent, and though she doesn’t want to be alone, she wants to feel like engaging with him is a choice that she is making for herself. She doesn’t want him to spring from the shadows every time she stumbles or dares to say the wrong thing.   
  
Above all else, the more he cares about her, the more she wants to care about him, too, and that prospect is uniquely terrifying.   
  
“Theta.” The name is soft, and he stands alongside her, wrapping a hand around her scarred forearm.   
  
She waits for whatever thought might follow it -- green eyes flicking between his own -- but nothing comes. Bitterness coats the back of her tongue with her nerves and her heartbeat accelerates so quickly that her world becomes a hazy blur of stars and motion. She tugs her arm away and takes a step backward, almost tripping on the very same sheets that cushioned her fall a moment ago.   
  
Koschei’s hand finds his face, wiping the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes. “I don’t always _get_ you, Theta.”   
  
A heavy sigh passes her lips, setting her disheveled bangs fluttering. For a moment, she’s tempted to fight with him, to take two steps backward and throw up an emotional wall that will only serve to frustrate them both, but with great effort, she wrestles her tongue into telling the truth. “I want space. Don’t feel like I can breathe if you’re too close, or even just hovering. When I decide I want your help, or...or --” She stumbles over the thought of the other things that he can offer before dropping it entirely. “ -- I’ll let you know. I told you yesterday I want agency in this little corner of my life, and I can’t have that if you go shoving your nose in every time you get worried or disapprove or feel like you’re more important than I am. It doesn’t just apply to your plans and all that. It applies here too. The little things. You don’t trust me enough to tell me what you’re up to, and that’s fine, but trust me enough to know that I can take care of myself.”   
  
Koschei’s gaze burns. Theta turns her eyes to the floor and shifts her weight from foot to foot, waiting for the moment to pass. She may be uncomfortable, but she will not back down.   
  
Eventually, he speaks. The words are spoken slowly and carefully chosen. “I don’t think I’m more important that you are.”   
  
Theta can’t help herself from twisting the knife just a little bit. “Good. ‘Cause you’re not.”   
  
She braces herself, expecting Koschei to meet her with the crackling rage that dominated the morning that he left, but instead, he laughs. It isn’t the same kind of laugh with which he met her slap the night before. Instead, it feels shockingly genuine, like a response to a joke shared between two old friends, but they are not old friends, and she missed the punchline.   
  
“ _What_ ?” she asks, leaning into the question and wrinkling her nose.   
  
The lingering echoes of the laugh continue to shake his shoulders, though it has faded into silence. “Nothing.”   
  
Though she would have allowed that kind of nonanswer to stand a week ago, she won’t settle for it now. Too much has happened. Too much has changed. She is relying on him, he is relying on her, and she won’t let him have a laugh at her expense and not let her know _why_. “What is it? Tell me,” she insists again, taking a step forward and peering at him with narrowed eyes.   
  
Koschei takes a minute to collect his thoughts before saying, “I like that even when you’re not the person you used to be, you’re still you.”   
  
It takes Theta a long moment to place the thought in the context of their conversation from the night before and understand what he means. Not only does she disagree with it, she doesn’t find it particularly funny. “Caring about things doesn’t make me a different person. I always did that. Wouldn’t’ve started fights at state dinners or terrified Caesar if I didn’t.”   
  
“No, but you’re far more interesting when you start caring about _yourself_ , Theta. A tiny bit of selfishness does you a world of good.” Koschei dares to step closer -- closing the space between them until it’s practically gone -- and though his fingers flick against the outside of his leg, he respects her desire for control and does not touch her. He doesn’t need to. The caress of his breath on her face and the way in which his eyes linger on the bruise on her neck is more than enough to unseat her, however, she does her best to hide her fluster, steering the conversation away from them and to Panem at large.   
  
“Bit dangerous, being interesting in a world like ours.”   
  
“Wouldn’t want to change it, otherwise.” The words are little more than a murmur spoken almost against her skin, designed not to be overheard.   
  
Her breath catches and her eyes meet his, and once again, she does her absolute best to change the subject, fighting not only against his basic impulses, but her own. “Am I allowed at training today or are you going to kick me out again?”   
  
A smug smile curls across his lips. “Look at me like that, love, and you can go anywhere you like.”   
  
The frantic beating of her heart fills her ears, a flush creeps across her neck, and she intentionally shoulder checks him as she steps past him to nurse her wounded pride in the bathroom. His laugh follows close on her heels until she closes the door and cuts it short.


	25. Chapter 25

The peace between them is fragile and fraught with pitfalls, but Theta holds onto it as tightly as she can. Though she is still unwilling to commit to whatever treason Koschei is engineering during the spare moments when he keeps to himself, she has to admit that not fighting him is better than fighting him. Considering that the Capitol is full of enemies and the most powerful man in Panem has set his sights upon them, she need not add to their number by clinging to the lingering vestiges of a grudge that has almost vanished. Koschei -- as flawed and foolish and callous as he may be -- does not seem to mean her harm, and Theta does her best to remember that. Where Rassilon deliberately triggered her panic, Koschei makes efforts to draw her out of it. Where Rassilon’s rage was metered in threats, Koschei’s is scribed in passion. She thinks that with an open mind and an open dialogue, she is finally able to grasp the difference.    
  
Of course, there are plenty of moments when she forgets -- when he treads on her toes by referencing pain and her instincts immediately leap towards defensiveness -- but she tries not to snap at him and last out. Of course, the walls are still there, but the battlements are no longer armed. Koschei can walk up to them and shout if he likes, can even try to climb over them, without risk of death at her hands. 

In return, Koschei has taken to deferring to Theta’s comfort levels and preferences. He asks what activities she is willing to participate in for training. He allows her to initiate their touches, whether it be their messy sleeping arrangements or a guided walkthrough of weaponcraft and self-defense. She has not thanked him directly for his newfound consideration, but she is not naturally inclined to reward people who meet expectations. In her opinion, he should have done this all along, regardless of their engagement status or how she deigned to treat him, however, it is too late to rewrite their troubled history. She merely appreciates the now, basking in it for as long as it may last and doing as little as possible to acknowledge it, lest in doing so, she break it.   
  
The night before the last training session, Koschei forgoes sleep, choosing to instead spend his time sitting on a sofa in the front room, filtering through decades of Games footage, searching for any techniques or information that he might have overlooked. After a long moment of hesitation spent waffling over the joys of not having to worry about waking up partially slung over him and the worry of facing her nightmares alone, Theta, too, forgoes the comfort of the bed and chooses to join him. She does not watch the footage itself, but she listens to the commentary and occasionally murmurs lines of input, and despite her best efforts, she eventually curls her legs beneath her and lightly dozes with her head on his shoulder.   
  
To his credit, he does not acknowledge the touch through comment or complaint or even an idle movement designed to make himself more comfortable. He merely continues with his chosen task as if nothing changed, as if there weren’t fifteen years when such a quiet and peaceful moment would have been impossible between them. 

Theta lurks in the limbo between sleeping and wakefulness, vaguely aware of the confused rush of sound as Koschei speeds up footage and then slows it down again and the slightly uncomfortable press of his shoulder against the side of her face, but she lacks the will to move. She is exhausted in the way that only a person who is doing their job thoroughly for the very first time can be exhausted, and though deep sleep keeps eluding her grasp, this noncommittal darkness somehow feels more helpful. She cannot have nightmares if she is not asleep, and surely sitting on the couch with her eyes closed is better than not trying to sleep at all. 

After a period so profoundly marked by bleary uncertainty that it could have lasted for either minutes or hours, the front door opens. Fine fabrics whisper across the floor as delicate footsteps mark the distance from the threshold to the couch. Theta is so precariously perched on the edge of sleep that she isn’t even sure whether or not the noise is real, or if a dream has superimposed itself on the outside world. A scent fills the air, like cold rain and fresh flowers. The blur of archived sound pauses, and Romana’s quiet whisper takes its place.   
  
“Is she --?” The sentence trails off, unsure which word best applies to the situation.  
  
“She’s fine.” Koschei does not match Romana’s cautious whisper, but he keeps his voice relatively low.   
  
For a moment, Theta is tempted to stir, but her body is heavy and her mind is sluggish, and perhaps it is best if she rests. No doubt anything important will be repeated in the morning. After all, Romana works alongside them both. If there is information that Koschei needs to know, then Theta will be no doubt told eventually. Of course, the thought assumes that this is real and that she hasn’t fully succumbed to sleep, which still seems like a distinct possibility. It would not be the first time that Koschei or Romana have trespassed upon her dreams.   
  
A sharp breath precedes Romana’s pointed question. “Can we talk?”  
  
Theta feels Koschei shift beneath her, placing remotes aside and gently leaning back against the cushioned back of the sofa. She gives into his movements, not bothering to fight them as her points of contact follow his gentle lead. “Candidly or otherwise?” he asks after a pause.   
  
“Candidly.”  
  
An idea rises above the fog in Theta’s mind, shaping into a question about why they would ever not be able to talk candidly within the relatively secure walls of their apartment and the tributes safely sequestered in their beds, but she does not successfully manage to ask it, or even open her eyes. She feels distinctly divorced from her body, and the room at large, the way she always does when sleep comes slowly and in bursts.   
  
A gentle hand slips into Theta’s pocket, painfully careful not to disturb her, and she is suddenly confronted with both reality and the tug back into full wakefulness. This feels real, this is real, and Romana and Koschei are talking in conspiratorial tones _without her_ and moreover, Koschei is rooting through her pockets without permission. She tenses slightly beneath his touch, almost imperceptible beneath the layers of fabric that divide them, but she does not open her eyes or dare to stir. She wants to know what they’re doing, and though she is a poor liar, she is very good at shrouding herself in defensive truths, and extraordinary tiredness still stalks her bones and threatens to drag her under.   
  
After a moment of careful searching, Koschei’s first two fingers grip the small sheet of camera interference discs and slide them free of the confines of the pocket. Ever since that night at the party when she neglected to carry them, Theta has made a point to do so, however, she did not realize that Koschei watched her stow them. “Put one of these on the camera outside the front door, would you? Just in case.”  
  
Hesitation enters Romana’s voice. “Are you sure she’s asleep?”  
  
Koschei chuckles. “She would have bit my hand off if she wasn’t.”  
  
Though that might have been true several days ago, it is not true now. Theta would have met him with a question and demanded an explanation, but she would not have dismissed him out of hand. She’s learning to ask about him, ask about what he’s thinking, ask about what he’s doing, and explain her actions in return. After that, she might very well have told him no or informed him that she is more than capable of grabbing them for him if he just asked, but if he happened to catch her on a good day and met her with a smile, she also might have tolerated and indulged the gesture. The more often he respects her request for space, the better she feels, and more likely she is to allow him to breach it in little, inoffensive ways.   
  
Footsteps retreat, and the door opens and closes twice more. After a moment’s pause, a chair slides across the floor and movement ceases. Theta wonders how long Romana and Koschei have waited to speak to each other in private, and what they might even have to speak about. She knows that Koschei speaks to everybody -- he knows more about Yaz than she does, a fact that she finds incredibly annoying -- but this doesn’t feel like small talk. It feels weighty, like an entire world hangs in the balance.   
  
Eventually, Romana speaks, posing a soft and dangerous question. “Do you think either of the tributes are capable of winning? Is this our year?”   
  
An involuntary shrug whispers across Koschei’s shoulders, lifting Theta’s head before lowering it again. “They’re not the worst pair we’ve had, but they’re not particularly talented, either. Sparrow’s a bit bloodthirsty. He has a chance of holding his own in a scrap, but I’ll have to see what the Gamemakers think during the demonstrations. As for the other...”   
  
He doesn’t have to elaborate. All parties involved know that Rennette is probably doomed. Even Theta is aware, despite the many promises that she has dared to make to the girl’s face.   
  
“Can you ask Ushas to nudge things in our favor? I don’t want to do this for another year, Koschei.” Desperation and grief fray the edges of Romana’s voice. It is a vulnerability that is almost never shown in Theta’s presence, and jealousy flares in her chest, so much so that she nearly overlooks the request for cheating and corruption. It bothers her that despite his bloody history, despite the histrionics, despite the messy way in which he often bungles his relationship with _her_ , his relationships with her friends seem steadier than her own. It hardly seems fair, but perhaps that it comes with the territory of keeping one's emotions behind a mask. Perhaps that makes him more reliable than Theta, who wears her heart on her sleeve and is bound to explode at a moment's notice.  
  
“ _Ushas_ \--” Koschei’s voice lingers on the word, though his tone is nigh unreadable. “ -- Isn’t speaking to me.”   
  
“Because of Theta’s meeting with the President?”   
  
“She may be being watched. Or she’s just grown tired of me. Hard to tell.”   
  
The sentences are clipped in a manner that suggest facetious frivolity, but both Theta and Romana recognize the familiar veneer of hollow showmanship, and Romana’s next question strikes with the quickness of a spear.   
  
“What did you do, Koschei?”   
  
A pause fills the air before Koschei’s mask gives way ever so slightly. “I don’t think she found my relationship woes particularly amusing, nor did she appreciate that I used her safe house to vex Theta.”   
  
“Theta wasn’t vexed, she was --”  
  
“ _I_ _know_.” The words burn, and Theta’s weightless void of world shifts again as Koschei waves an interrupting hand. “Semantics of intent versus results. In my defense, Romana, I had no way of anticipating that the President would call on her.”   
  
Romana bristles, and her words come a bit faster and bit louder, though she does not break her unshakeable composure. “You could have returned when you found out. I know you knew, because I told Ushas before Theta even set foot in his house.”   
  
“I was angry, and I didn’t know it was going to be that bad.”   
  
Rage rises beneath Theta’s skin like an unscratchable itch. How dare he know the trials that she was put through during his vanishment and not care. How dare he refuse to do what he could to rectify the situation. How dare he stage his return on a public stage after days of opportunities that would have been both less sudden and less painful. She was charitable enough to assume that no one told him until right before the party and that that was his first opportunity to try to fix it. She never thought that he might have made a deliberate choice to remain away. It's just another mistake in a long line of them, another way he's misread her, another way he's wronged her, and if this conversation happened to be actually operating under the secrecy that Koschei and Romana suppose that it has, she might have never found out.  
  
Her head slips from its perch on his shoulder, and it takes every ounce of the energy provided by that anger to fight against her natural instincts and keep her body limp. She does not brace herself for whatever collision might be forthcoming, schooling her face into the picture of quiet sleep.   
  
Koschei moves quickly, catching her head in his hands and guiding it onto his thigh below, saving Theta from the jolting, sudden pain of impact. Anger still lingers in her chest, but there is gratitude there. too. Negativity and positivity seem to coexist with him, as if she can't have one without the other. Despite the fact that they both continue to demand perfection from the other, continue to try to slot unpredictable behaviors into predictable and convenient patterns, everything between them is imperfect.  
  
For a moment, she can hear him stop breathing as he waits to see if she wakes. She adjusts slightly, turning over in the manner that anyone would when they are thrown from one dream to another, taking the opportunity to move her face towards Koschei’s body and away from Romana’s ever-alert gaze.   
  
After a few tense minutes of silence, Koschei dares to speak again. “Did she tell you what happened? What he did to her?”  
  
Weariness lines Romana’s answer. “She didn’t speak to anyone aside from the tributes for days. She didn’t even eat. Did she tell you anything?”   
  
He shakes his head, and the echo of movement echoes throughout his entire body. Restlessly, the fingers of his right hand move to Theta’s shoulder, drawing idle circles against the fabric of her shirt. “A scrap of it, but nothing else. Nothing useful.” A sigh fills his lungs and manifests into words. “I don’t think she trusts me, Romana.”   
  
“She’s engaged to you.”   
  
He scoffs. “At the President’s behest. Not because she wants to be.”  
  
Theta stiffens. All this time, he has needled her about the importance of keeping their secret from everyone, including Romana, and yet, he is willing to spill it as he pleases. That alone is enough to tempt her into opening her eyes and demanding truth from both of them, but curiosity stays the impulse. The conversation isn't over, and she is hungry for the insight that she's so long been denied. As much as she would hate to admit it, she's looking for something specific, something worth throwing herself into, something that speaks to the promises that he wrote for her in the dark when flames met flames and unspoken hunger clawed at them both.   
  
Romana doesn’t so much as pause for breath. “I assumed as much. Public feuds rarely give way to private forgiveness so absolute that one is willing to sign their life away. Not to mention that Theta has been profoundly uninterested in relationships since the very first day I met her. She went on and on about how people kept requesting that she marry, but she didn’t see the point.”   
  
A note of pain enters Koschei’s voice. “She probably thought she’d be dead long before she’d be happy.”  
  
“Under the circumstances, can you blame her?”  
  
His answer is little more than a sigh of resignation. “No.”  
  
There’s a rustle as two sets of eyes turn, and Theta is keenly aware of their attention. She is glad that she turned her face away from Romana, glad that the only person who she needs to fool is Koschei. She focuses her attention on her breathing, counting the beats of her heart and measuring the pace of her lungs by them, keeping every function steady, the way it would be if she was actually asleep.   
  
“How often has she been doing that?” Romana asks after a long moment.  
  
Confusion lifts Koschei’s tone. “Sleeping?”   
  
“Touching you,” Romana supplies.  
  
“I don’t know. It’s all a bit complicated by the fact that I kept touching her.”   
  
“Well, we all knew that. The entire Capitol knows that, unless she somehow managed to mark that love bite on herself.”   
  
“If she could, she would.” Theta swears she hears a glimmer of pride running beneath the words, but it is undercut by that same undercurrent of sorrow that has dominated the conversation. “I did ask her before I did that, by the way. I’m not whatever monster she painted me to be.”  
  
“You’re not a saint, either,” Romana observes in a manner that suggests narrowed eyes and scathing judgement.  
  
“Never claimed to be one. Never want to be one. Would rather be a bit vile and have half a chance at carving a way out then sit through all of this. You’re a bit of a bastard, too, Romana, or you wouldn’t be in this with me.”   
  
The pause on the monitor slips, and the rush of violence and commentary hits her ears again. She feels Koschei’s frantic scramble for the remote as he tries to cut off the sound before it wakes her. No doubt the entire conversation feels as though it is taking place on borrowed time, subject to end at the very moment that Theta dares to reassert herself upon the world. Little do they know that she has the power to end this whenever the whim arises.   
  
“We got off track,” Romana says once they feel secure enough in Theta’s silence to resume speaking.   
  
“Terrible habit of ours, really,” Koschei drawls.   
  
“Where do we stand with the tributes? Should I start putting things into motion or should I assume that we will have to wait another year?” The questions come more quickly than they did before, frantic to fill whatever little time they have available to them. Little do they know that the imagined timer ended before the conversation even began, and that Theta listened to every word of it.  
  
“I don’t know. Theta has not agreed to participate yet.”  
  
A sneeze begins to gather in the back of Theta’s nose. Her eyes water as she fights to hold it back -- willing that the reflex disappear entirely -- but it grows increasingly stronger. She can't give into it. She hasn't heard whatever it is that she's been waiting for yet.   
  
“Have you asked her?” Romana presses.   
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Have you asked her _lately_?” she corrects.   
  
Koschei’s fingers stop their idle circles. “She asked me not to. Something about love and rebellion being too much to handle.”   
  
Romana sighs. “One of those is less important than the other.”   
  
Koschei’s tongue lashes against his teeth in anger. “To _you_.”   
  
There it is.   
  
The black void of feigned sleep fills with stars, she forgets how to breathe, and they start to spin in a dizzy haze of scattered, hopeful light. Theta should not find comfort in the thought that his feelings for her are just as important as the plans that he has been nurturing for years, but she does. As uncertain as she is in her own emotional standing, she likes that Koschei is secure enough in his own love and desire to freely admit it to the people around them, to place it as a priority, and despite her previous insistence that she would never be able to find love again, that sense of safety does manage to remind her of those childhood evenings spent by the fire, swapping hearts with Rose Tyler. For a painful, beautiful moment, she forgets both the itch in her nose and the bated breath gathering in her lungs that threaten to cut the conversation short.  
  
Knowing that she is about to be drawn into a losing battle, Romana circles back to the previous point. “Do you _need_ her?”  
  
“At a victor’s crowning, we would both have the same window of opportunity available to us. It would be helpful to have a second --”   
  
The inevitable finally strikes, dizziness gives way to instinct, and Theta sneezes, knocking her forehead against Koschei’s torso.   
  
Almost immediately, the tambour of Koschei’s voice changes to the same velvety softness with which he meets her whenever a nightmare shakes her from sleep. “Hey, love.” The shift is so sudden that she ought to be suspicious, that she ought to assume that it is feigned or shallow or malicious, but she thinks she finally understands the depths at which his love runs, and, more importantly, she thinks that she can sense it in the way that he speaks and the heat that radiates off his skin in waves. She wishes she could have grasped its truth under more honest circumstances, but that is a worry to be met in daylight with a clear mind.   
  
Romana stands, and the sound of her footsteps retreat back down the hall with an unmatched degree of quiet swiftness. If Theta was not awake for the entire conversation, she would not have even known that Romana was here. She cannot help but wonder what other conversations are held when she is just outside of earshot, and who else in their circle might be caught in the web of Koschei’s grand plans. Is Amy untouched? Yaz? Yaz _did_ mention something about assassins the last time Theta wandered up to the District 12 penthouse in search of help and friendship.   
  
Theta cracks an eye open and stretches, making a grand show of being unwillingly roused from a nap, holding the truth so tightly to her chest that he does not have a chance to reach out and grab it. “What time is it?”   
  
“Far too early to be awake. Do you want help going back to the bedroom?” Brown eyes find her own -- soft and worried and glimmering with a faint veneer of tears that she had not heard She wonders what sparked them, but she cannot ask without betraying the game that she just played.  
  
“I can manage.”  
  
She almost stumbles over the chair that Romana moved into the middle of the room, but she does eventually make it to the bed and fall onto the mattress, head spinning with whispered conversations that did not belong to her and heart clinging to a sense of warmth that she once thought had been lost forever.   



	26. Chapter 26

When Theta wakes, she feels as though the world has shifted slightly. It has not been pulled from beneath her feet, but the air tastes different, the sunlight streaming into the room seems a little bit brighter, and her heart feels a little bit fuller. For a moment, she wonders what might have precipitated the change, but it does not take long for the overheard conversation from the night before to come flooding back. She remembers the unparalleled warmth that flooded through her when Koschei claimed that his love was just as important as his plans for rebellion, and the gentle softness with which he greeted her when he thought that she sneezed herself out of the throes of sleep. She still does not think that she loves him back, but kindness, consideration, and safety are incredibly meaningful in a world that often denies its citizens of all three, and with her grudge quite forgotten, she clings to the hope that they provide with an ardent devotion that she has not felt in years.    
  
Theta lifts her head, eyeing Koschei’s empty side of the bed to gauge whether or not he returned to it anytime during the night. It appears untouched, sheets seemingly ruffled only by the echoes of her own movements and not those of another person. Fleeting worry washes across her tongue, but she swallows it back. She should not have anything to fear. Though she was excluded from the conversation between Koschei and Romana, it was merely because she has not yet agreed to be involved in their plan, not because they were conspiring against her. She does not feel like she needs to worry about Koschei stabbing her in the back or threatening to drag her down with him should things begin to go south. He wants her to be a part of this -- wants her to be a part of the things that are important to him -- and that  _ means _ something. It is a bulwark against the darkness that has so often threatened to devour her, and though it may have come from an unexpected source, she is incredibly grateful for it.    
  
After a moment, she leaves the warm comfort of the bed and composes herself enough to face the day -- pulling on a fresh set of clothes and reluctantly dragging a brush through her tangled hair. It is not much in the way of effort, but it is considerably more than she has given in the past. There have been times when she’s lurked in the same sweater for days on end, vacating it only when it began to smell, but emotionally, she feels better than she has in years, and that makes her want to feel better physically, too.    
  
Theta finds Koschei, Romana, and the two tributes gathered around the breakfast table, and she swipes a piece of toast from Koschei’s plate as she slides into the vacant chair. His tired yet steady gaze turns to follow her as his head tilts in mild interest.    
  
“That was mine, love.”   
  
“Not anymore,” she declares through a mouthful of bread and butter, leaning back in her chair and folding one leg underneath her.    
  
She knows she shouldn’t needle him, not when he spent his entire night pouring over information designed to help their tributes survive while she did little more than sleep and eavesdrop, but in the light of a new day, teasing him almost passes for fun. She almost forgot what it feels like to have fun. For years, her version of fun has consisted solely of constructing and deconstructing pieces of technology in the comfortable solitude of her home and ruining lavish parties by negating the effects of the drinks, but none of that makes her world feel bigger. None of that makes her heart feel lighter. None of that changes the color of the sunlight and makes her want to live a little longer and breathe a little deeper.    
  
A faint smile trespasses across Koschei’s face -- managing to pass for both pleased and surprised at the same time -- but he does not comment. Instead, he turns back to his food and stares at it, thoughtfully pushing a stray cube of melon across the surface of his plate. Theta watches him as she takes another bite, wondering what a man who dares to plan a rebellion might not dare to say in the face of a woman who steals his toast.   
  
“You’re peppy this morning,” Romana comments, eyeing Theta over the pile of papers clutched in her hand. Bit old-fashioned, papers at the breakfast table, but something about Romana has always struck Theta as being slightly out of their time. For all the finery and the splendid hats, she is too refined for the materialistic revelry of the Capitol, and far too polite and structured to truly feed upon a culture based upon exploitation. Theta assumed that her own influence was steering Romana away from comfort with the Games, but in light of last night’s conversation, she cannot help but wonder if that impulse was always there, quietly searching for a suitable outlet. Although Theta was not organized enough in her resistance to provide one, apparently Koschei is. It must be an incredibly smooth operation, if it took Theta this long to catch wind of Romana’s involvement. There is no telling how deeply it might run.    
  
“I didn’t have any nightmares last night. That hasn’t happened for ages,” Theta answers with a rolling shrug. She thinks that it has less to do with the internal changes that Koschei precipitated than the fact that her mind and body were too exhausted to conjure an army of demons and bad memories, but she cannot entirely discount his influence.   
  
She finishes her toast and leans sideways again, striking at Koschei’s plate for a second time, but he intercepts her wrist in midair.    
  
“Get your own,” he says, inclining his head towards the platters in the center of the table. There is more than enough food there to feed the five of them -- there always is, one of the selling points of the Games is that people who have never experienced excess and finery have a chance to revel in it for a glorious couple of weeks before their untimely deaths -- but she isn’t particularly interested in eating for eating’s sake. She wants to see how far she can push him, to test the boundaries of this new territory and see what gives way beneath a bit of pressure. She wants to feel the burn of his passion as it brushes up against her own.    
  
Fighting fire with fire is always dangerous, and though the President should have considered that before shoving them together, he had not, and it is their reward to reap.    
  
“It tastes better when it’s stolen,” she says with a sniff, meeting his gaze with her own as he continues to maintain his grip on her wrist.    
  
His thumb strokes the inside of her wrist once before he lets her go, and a shiver runs through her body. As he turns his gaze back to his food, he remarks, “We are in the Capitol, dear. All the food is stolen.”   
  
Across the table, Romana hisses, shooting her eyes sideways at the two children. Koschei merely shrugs his reply, a gesture that suggests that everyone who has been born and raised in the outlying Districts already knows that they are intentionally starved for the benefit of the elite who dwell in the city, however, he does not press the topic.    
  
Theta takes advantage of the opening to snatch that second piece of toast.    
  
Koschei doesn’t have time to stop her, and he sets his fork down with an indignant clatter. “Did you  _ want _ something, Theta?”    
  
“No.” It’s an honest enough answer. She doesn’t know how to articulate what she does want, nor would she wish to do so in the presence of both Romana and the tributes. It is a discussion best held behind closed doors, and delayed until a day when time does not press in around them as tightly as it does today. It is the last morning in which they have time with their tributes, the last opportunity to fill in any gaps, the moment to pick out specific skills to highlight for the scoring demonstrations the next day. No matter how badly she would like to stop life in its tracks and sort through this mess at a pace that is convenient for her, she lacks the power required to avoid being swept away by the inexorable tide of the Games. They all do.    
  
“Did you sleep at all?” Theta queries, turning the conversation away from her own antics and towards Koschei, green stare fixing on the dark circles that lurk below his eyes. She suspects that she knows the answer, but it seems to be a question worth asking anyway.    
  
“I did not,” he says without explanation or excuse.    
  
“No wonder you’re a bit grumpy this morning.”    
  
Romana looks up from her work again, eyes narrowed with an overwhelming amount of suspicion that she makes no attempt to hide. “He’s not the one who’s being odd, Theta.”    
  
Theta finishes her second piece of toast with relish. “I feel good. Great, actually. Ready to face the day and all that. Weird feeling, but I'm not about to argue with it.” She stands, brushing lingering crumbs from first her palms and then her lap before stalking towards the door. “I want to go for a walk. I’ll see you lot at the training facility. Well, not you Romana. Unless you wanted to go.”   
  
“Trust me, I have no desire to go,” Romana quips, but her words are almost entirely drowned out by the scrape of Koschei’s chair on the floor as he rises to his feet.   
  
“Wait. I’m coming with you.”    
  
Theta’s eyebrows raise, and somewhere behind him, Romana chokes on a sip of her tea.   
  
“Funny, I don’t recall extending an invitation,” Theta says, feigning pensive thoughtfulness as her eyes sift through the air above his head for the memory of her previous words. She is needling him again, working her way beneath his skin to get a reaction. It works.    
  
Koschei stalks to the front door and holds it open, disregarding Theta’s entire thought. After a moment’s pause, he bristles and asks, “Are you going or not?”

Theta flashes Koschei a teasing glance as she finally steps past him and into the hallway, and he slams the door a bit too forcefully behind her.   
  
She flinches at the forceful crack of the door against its frame. “Bit unnecessary, that.”    
  
As she speaks, she pivots on her back foot, craning her neck and looking up at the camera that lurks over the door’s upper right corner. Sure enough, one of her little discs is pressed against its underside, still sitting where Romana must have left it the previous night. Standing on her toes, she peels it off and tucks it into the back pocket of her trousers. When she turns back around, she catches Koschei looking at her, eyebrows raised in obvious confusion.    
  
“Doesn’t do anything,” she says by way of explanation. “I took that camera offline days ago. Dismantled it five separate times when I got bored. No one’s fixed it since.”    
  
Koschei hesitates, tongue wetting his lips as his own gaze roams back to the camera. “How can you tell?”    
  
“I reinstalled it backwards,” she breezes, brushing against his arm so lightly that the contact might  _ almost _ succeed in being dismissed as an entirely unintentional side effect of the narrowness of the hallway.   
  
He continues to look up at the backwards camera for a long moment, clearly struggling to see what Theta sees, before shrugging the incident aside and falling into step beside her as she approaches the elevators. “I expected that this would be a bad day,” he says as the doors glide open and they step inside. “For you, I mean. You tend to bleed emotion as the Games draw closer.”    
  
Theta settles against the back railing, looking up at the glass ceiling as they begin their descent. “On the contrary, it’s the last good day we get to have before the noose tightens.” Her nose wrinkles as she considers her choice of words. “Good being relative, of course. I would rather be a dozen other places doing a dozen other things, but I’ll take what I can get.”    
  
“With a dozen other people, too, I suppose,” Koschei says, his voice barely louder than a mumble.   
  
“No. I don’t know a dozen other people, nonetheless like them.”    
  
“You don’t like me either.”   
  
The ends of her blonde hair sweep across her shoulder as she regards him. “We’re engaged,” she says, mischievous amusement curling her lips. It’s an expression more commonly found on his face than her own, but she’d like to borrow it for a while. She spent days fighting to find her voice and carve out a comfortable space, and it’s her turn to wield the power in this relationship. This is her opportunity to delight in his confusion and test the nature of her own feelings before the walls close in again, and it would be a shame if she wasted it.    
  
“We both know that doesn’t mean anything.”    
  
“Maybe it does now. I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me.” The doors open, and Theta steps out, trusting Koschei to follow. Warm skin slides against her palm as he slips her hand into hers, and she neither flinches nor pulls away. She tugs him towards the door. “There’s a vendor in the marketplace I want to speak to. He carries tiny screwdrivers and I’m desperately in need of a set. Bobby pins are horribly imprecise, you know.”    
  
Koschei stops asking questions and merely follows, listening and observing as she pulls him along in her inexorable wake.   
  
  
  
  
When the pair of Victors finally step foot into the training facility, Theta's mood dampens to match its grim mundanity, but her pocket is heavy with a brand new set of screwdrivers, and there is a bright yellow flower tucked behind her ear. The first speaks to the success of her own endeavors, and the other is a small indulgence that she granted Koschei. Flowers typically lie more solidly within Romana and Amy’s purviews than in Theta’s. Her clothes speak to comfort and the grey and blue expanse of sky when she is allowed to pick them herself, however, Koschei offered it to her with such genuine earnestness that it seemed almost cruel to decline, and though she may have many faults -- she is bitter and self-isolating and has a tendency to drown in her own sorrows -- she despises cruelty in others so thoroughly that she does her absolute best to avoid mirroring it herself, no matter how badly the world might tempt her to bend.    
  
The tributes are visibly nervous. Sparrow rocks from one foot to the other when standing, and while sitting, he crosses and uncrosses his legs so often that it makes Theta dizzy. Rennette remains mostly still, but she winds and unwinds her fingers in intricate, rhythmic patterns, marking the passage of time as it slips away from them. It stirs pity and pain and anger in Theta’s heart, and she cannot stand to look at them for long. Thus, her gaze remains fixed upon Koschei as he teaches, taking in the lessons and reminders that he compiled during his sleepless night. Despite his obvious tiredness, it is a thorough and well-presented list.    
  
He confirms that both tributes know how to swim, he runs through a list of ways to defend against ranged weapons with melee weapons, and he explains some unusual survival scenarios that occurred in the 13th, 18th, and 23rd Annual Hunger Games respectively. For her part, Theta jumps in with a quick lesson in anatomy, telling the children best to strike to incapacitate their foe regardless of height or position. “Even if you’re flat on your back,” she says, “You can still escape if you aim in the right place. Gotta keep your head, is all.” It’s a shockingly dark subject for her, given her typical habit of focusing on the aspects of the Games that speak more of adventure and less of death, and when she catches Koschei’s eyes and interest lingering on her, she shrugs, “Someone’s gotta do it.”    
  
Koschei’s tongue works against his incisor as he carefully considers his reply. “Someone, indeed.”    
  
With that, their period of last minute verbal instruction comes to an end, and for a couple of hours, they focus on the skills that the tributes want to hone for their demonstrations. Given that she spent her own demonstration protesting atop a pile of boxes, Theta is minimally helpful in this regard and leaves most of the work to Koschei, however she continues to keep an eye on everyone. She watches Koschei move, watches him engage with the tributes, watches him pass on the set of skills in which he excels.    
  
Idly, she plucks the flower from her hair and turns it over in her hands, examining the shock of color in the petals and the veins that run through the bright green of the stem. It is strikingly at odds with the domineering, sterile grey of the setting and the darkness that dominates both the proceedings at hand and her previous opinion of the man who gave it to her. Koschei is a man born of violence and filled to the brim with thinly veiled anger that flares unpredictably, and she once  _ hated _ him for it, however, he is also a man of magic tricks and small gestures and a distinct brand of quiet regard that chases away dark nights and cloying nightmares. It is a difficult disparity to reconcile, but she carries it, too. She also was born of violence and marked by tragedy, but she tinkers with electronics and speaks of ridiculous things like raccoon uprisings and keeps a room in her house open for people who need it.    
  
They are both inherently complicated people, and for the first time, she starts to think that she might be able to learn to love him back.    
  
From across the room, Koschei meets her eyes, and she carefully tucks the flower back behind her ear.    
  
“Did you _want_ something?” she asks loudly enough to bridge the distance between them, echoing the question that he posed over breakfast.    
  
“No.”   
  
Even through the mask, the word sounds like a lie, and the ghost of a smile crinkles the corners of Theta’s eyes. 


	27. Chapter 27

Quiet dread hangs over the day’s proceedings, interrupted only by the restless tapping of Koschei’s foot and the incessant pounding of Theta’s heart. The tributes are tucked away in another room of the building awaiting their skills demonstrations, and though most mentors pass the time elsewhere, Theta convinced Koschei to stay here, hidden away in another gymnasium on the opposite end of the building.    
  
She hates this, hates waiting, hates time dragging its toes as the inevitable looms ever closer. It may not be their respective days of judgement -- those have long since passed -- but despite knowing that at least one of the children will be dead and buried by the time this is over, it is difficult not to grow attached to them, difficult not to feel the pain and worry and confusion that they must be feeling as they are held elsewhere in the building. It makes her bitter, irritable, and oversensitive -- chasing away the fragile joy that dominated the previous day. The realizations still linger, but the mood itself has been squashed entirely, replaced by the mundane dreadfulness of her depression. It feels like a relapse, feels like a step backwards, feels like the world has sucked the breath from her lungs and the life from her eyes. It feels even more terrible and all-consuming than it used to. Holding delight in her hands and watching it be snatched from her is far, far worse than not remembering what it felt like at all.   
  
Koschei switches from tapping his foot to tapping the tips of his nails against the metal of the weapons cart beside his chair, and it echoes through the empty vastness of the room, bouncing off of concrete and grating on Theta’s already raw nerves.    
  
“Will you  _ stop _ ?” she hisses, shooting a sidelong glance in his direction. She cannot control the Games, she cannot control her pain, but she thinks that at the very least, she can use his desire to control him.    
  
Irritation flashes across the lines of his face and the set of his shoulders, but he indulges her, leaning forward and bracing his elbows against his knees to stifle the temptation to fidget. “Why did you insist on staying here? We could have easily gone back to the apartments, grabbed a drink, and tried to forget for a little while. That’s what everyone else is doing.”   
  
Theta shrugs. She wishes that she took the time to think through the impulse before dragging him down a series of hallways and closing the door behind them. Maybe if she had chosen to forget about all of this for a while, she would not have slipped back into this oppressive darkness, but it’s too late to change that now. She is doomed, and she has doomed him with her. “I dunno. I wanted to feel involved, I guess. Wanted to feel like I could do something. Wanted to be here if they needed help.”   
  
“They wouldn’t let us help even if they did. It’s a trial for the tributes and the tributes alone. Unless they do something incredibly stupid, they’ll be fine, love. There might be a handful of injuries, but no one ever dies during scoring.”    
  
“No, but deaths are written in those numbers, Koschei.”    
  
The scores determine which tributes might be easy pickings, which tributes are worth allying with, which tributes might be a threat. They both know it from personal experience. Koschei scored high and Theta scored low, and the play within both of their Games were dictated by those rankings. With luck, this year’s pair will land somewhere in the middle, but luck has rarely fallen in Theta’s favor, and judging by the conspiring that she overheard the other night, it rarely falls in Koschei’s favor either.    
  
For a moment, she is tempted to ask him about that conversation, tempted to reveal that she listened, tempted to ask what lies in the balance if both of the tributes die for the fifteenth year running, but her eyes turn to the countless cameras that litter the ceiling and she thinks better of it.    
  
After another lengthy pause, Koschei stands with a sigh, running his fingers over the line of training daggers and swords on the cart beside him. “Wouldn’t you feel better if you did something, Theta? Get the blood flowing a little bit? Take your mind off things?”    
  
Green eyes follow his movement, narrowing slightly as she catches his meaning. “I will hold a blade for the benefit of the tributes, Koschei; I won’t hold one for you.”    
  
“A couple of weeks ago, you refused to hold one at all,” he observes with an easy glance and a knowing expression. He turns away from the cart with an almost theatrical spin and settles in front of her, bracing his palms on the back of her chair. “There’s no threat in it. No promise of violence, no compromised morality, no whispers of evil. It’s a purely physical activity.” He breaks out a smile -- soft, insistent, and edged with the faintest hint of mischief. “Surely it’s better to pass the time by doing something rather than doing nothing, and since  _ you _ decided that we should stay here, we don’t have an abundance of options.”    
  
“I don’t think it will help.”   
  
“Surely it can’t hurt? Come on, Theta.”   
  
Theta’s eyes roll towards the ceiling and its crisscrossed latticework of rafters and the net that she used to teach Rennette how to climb all those days ago. It has not been all that long since she decided to start actively participating in this round of training, but it feels like a century has passed. So much has changed, both within her heart and outside of it, however, that does not mean that she is entirely without fear, and today, as she lurks beneath the twin shadows of past trauma and future grief, that fear is oppressively strong. It lines her lungs and tightens its grip around her heart.    
  
Fear defines life in both the Capitol and Panem at large. It defines the path that a victor is forced to walk. It defines the lines on her face and the weight on her shoulders and the wary way in which she still refuses to give into the impulses that race beneath her skin and beg her to surrender to her basest instincts.    
  
It also makes it impossible to sit still and do nothing. 

Anxiety itches in her muscles and tugs at her bones until she finds the will to meet his eyes with a simmering stare, ignoring the faint and familiar waft of peppermint that fills the air between them. “Fine. You win.”    
  
A grin spreads across his lips, so wide as to be almost devious, but she knows it to be a grin born of hard-fought victory. For a moment, Theta dares to wonder if this more than it seems, a part of his plan, even, but in the end, she chalks it up to that cloying, foolish love. He wants to play with her in the same way that she toyed with him yesterday.    
  
Such a shame she’s not in a better mood.    
  
Koschei returns to the cart, and with a flick of his wrist, he pulls a sparring blade free. It’s light and airy, longer than the daggers that she had favored during her own training and he had wielded during his Games, but fighting with daggers would require compromising a certain degree of distance. It would be  _ intimate _ . It would be a press of bodies on bodies and the mixing and mingling of sweat and effort and bandied words, and she suspects that he knows that neither of them are ready for that.    
  
Koschei holds the sword out to her, smile still lingering -- deep and confident and alluring. She takes it, meeting his eyes for only a moment before looking away. She doesn’t want him to peer into her mind and see the doubts that lurk in its shadows.   
  
His restless fingers consider his own options for a moment before settling on a training blade of his own -- slightly heavier than hers, but not the heaviest available, and he inclines his head towards an area of the room where a stark and unforgiving circle has been painted upon the floor. Obediently, Theta follows, fingers loosely wrapped around the hilt of her own blade, though she stops when her toes tap the edge of that line of paint.    
  
“Rules of engagement,” he announces once he crosses the thin white barrier that marks the change between this space and the rest of the room. “Don’t aim for the face -- the blades may be dull, but I still wager that you could take my eye out, were you so inclined -- and feet must remain in the circle. If you step outside, you automatically forfeit the match.”    
  
A curious question lifts both her eyebrow and her voice. “Are you keeping score?”    
  
“No,” he says, amusement dancing in his voice as his eyes meet hers, “ But I have little interest in chasing you around the perimeter of the room. We already learned that I can’t keep up.”   
  
Theta hesitates. She has always had a terrible habit of running away from any and all obstacles that plant themselves in her path, and it is terribly difficult to put herself in a position where running is no longer an option. Of course, she can simply call it quits and step out of bounds should she grow uncomfortable -- she is not entirely without a safety net -- but that also means surrendering, and she is almost equally loathe to allow him to beat her at any game, even one that she is barely willing to play and almost completely untrained in.    
  
After a moment, she gives into him and steps over the line.    
  
Relief swells for only a passing second before it is cut short by the seemingly effortless sweep of Koschei’s blade in the air in front of her. It moves so quickly that she almost lacks the time to respond. Metal clangs against metal at the last second, and she scrambles sideways, spinning away as she seeks to find a space where she might have enough room to step backwards.    
  
“You could at least give me a moment to get ready,” she protests, breathing heavy and eyes frantic as she waits for him to strike again.    
  
“You had a moment, and then you stepped into the ring. Rules are rules, Theta.”    
  
Koschei swings again, and she ducks, catching her weight on one hand before springing upright again. Her nose wrinkles. “Never much cared for rules. Suspect you don’t either, otherwise you wouldn’t be you.” She doesn’t dare elaborate on the thought for fear of the prying eyes and listening ears that inevitably lurk in a space as well-traveled as this one. She would not be surprised to know that someone, somewhere is already monitoring this footage and filing it away in a folder that speaks to their false engagement and numerous misdeeds.    
  
She waits for him to strike again, and this time she meets the blow with the very edge of her blade, allowing his sword to slide all the way down to her hilt before she twists it free. It isn’t quite strong enough to wrest the sword from his grip, but she feels him stumble, and the faint whisper of satisfaction shimmers in her eyes, some of her previous dread forgotten amid the sheer rush of adrenaline provided by going toe-to-toe with him.    
  
Koschei retreats back to his own side of the circle, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he watches her. She continues to stand partly off-kilter, waiting for his next strike, but it doesn’t come. Instead, he observes, “Are you only going to defend against me or are we going to spar, love?”   
  
The nerves creep back in, and her tongue swipes across her lips. “I thought we  _ were _ sparring.”    
  
“Sparring implies give and take. Can’t spar if you don’t give a little.” His teeth catch the light, flashing the achingly feral smile that she has come to both dread and anticipate in equal measure. “I won’t hurt you. Won’t judge you, even. Worst that can happen is we grapple a little and you lose.”    
  
Her wary hesitation lingers, and a surprising truth writes itself across her lips. “Never sat well with losing.” For all the thoughts she has about winning the Games being a far worse fate than losing them, she thinks that if she was thrown into the Arena today, she’d still fight to win, just like whenever the threat of death enters her life without express invitation, she always seeks to circumvent it. In a world where she has so often been denied even the most fundamental levels of control, she clings to what little scraps of it she can find. She hides her feelings for Koschei, she spits her hatred for the systems that rule their lives, and she steadfastly refuses to admit defeat.   
  
The bitterness of the thought spurs her forward, and she strikes, feinting towards his left side before pivoting redirecting the blow. He meets it with bored ease, but the gleam in his eyes and the hunger of his smile both intensify. He is so delighted that she has agreed to play his game on his terms that he overlooks the warning signs, ignores her obvious walls and misgivings. He does not realize that he cannot push her very far today before she snaps.    
  
Koschei attacks in a quick flurry that she cannot quite match, and his blade taps her in the delicate hollow of her shoulder.    
  
“Point.”   
  
Her breath leaves her nose in a quiet huff. “Thought you said we weren’t keeping score.”   
  
“We’re not,” Koschei replies, taking a step backward and lowering the tip of his blade towards the floor.    
  
“Then why are you tallying points?”    
  
Dark eyebrows raise as those irresistible eyes find hers, riddles rising in their depths. She is too wrapped up in her own foul mood to bother reading into whatever he might be thinking. “Does it bother you?”    
  
“A bit, yeah.”   
  
A shrug ripples through his shoulders. “A point’s a point.”   
  
Irritation stirs in her chest and boils in her veins as she approaches him with incredible swiftness, seeking to aim a blow that is both harder and faster than she knows how to manage. He sweeps it aside and her blade clatters to the cement floor without having gotten near enough to accomplish anything.    
  
She stalks over to the place where the practice sword fell and picks it up again. “It’s not fair when you’ve practiced and I haven’t.”    
  
“Do you want me to teach you?”   
  
His every word pushes her closer and closer to the invisible edge of the cliff on which she stands. He doesn’t know how close she is to falling. He has no way of knowing. She did not bother to tell him, was too afraid of being vulnerable to let him in on the reality of the pain, to admit that now is not the time for sparring and jokes and fire. Today, the fire burns so hot and so high that it threatens to destroy her.   
  
“No,” she replies, the word hopelessly and childishly stubborn as she slips ever further into the familiar clutches of her wrath and the comfort of old habits.    
  
“Very well then.”   
  
Koschei strikes again, the point of his blade coming to rest on the lingering bruise on her neck . His eyes follow it with unshakeable focus, and it lingers for so long that she begins to wonder if he’s quite forgotten how to move. “Are you sure you don’t want me to teach you? I hear I’m a  _ very _ good teacher.”   
  
He’s trying to help, but every playful jab rubs salt into open wounds, and it stings.   
  
Her eyes meet his, full to the brim with anger, and she lets herself be utterly consumed by it. She allows it to speak on her behalf and it speaks cruelly and without care -- not for him, not for herself, and not for the fragile peace that they forged before them. “Not if you’re going to be condescending about it. You’re not better than me because you know how to fight. Stop claiming to be better than me. You’re not. You’ll  _ never _ be.”   
  
Sadness flickers across his face as he takes a step backward, lowering both his voice and the point of his blade, realizing that he might have taken things a step too far. “I don’t think I’m better than you, Theta. I’ve told you before, but I don’t think you ever listen.”   
  
Theta bristles, falling back on the very instincts that she has been fighting to unlearn and stalwartly defending herself against vulnerability and change and the insinuation that she might be wrong. She does not acknowledge his change in tone by backing off and communicating her current emotional fragility. Instead, she chooses to gather up every ounce of her pain and lashes out with an additional bit of cruelty that is both highly inappropriate and decidedly unearned.   
  
“I don’t believe you.” The claim explodes in midair, and its ashes singe them both. Even as her anger compels her tongue to shape the words, she is well aware that they are not true. They are designed to hurt them, and they don’t need to be true to accomplish that task. Of course, he has often stumbled and fallen in his quest to earn her good graces, has relapsed and fallen back upon old, familiar habits as often as she has, but he has also fought alongside her. He has fought for her. He has sought to take this world and turn it into something that she can stand to live in.    
  
It is a terrible thing to say, and she knows that, but in her fear, she stands by it anyway. Being consumed by her rage and terror is far easier than opening up, admitting her mistakes, and allowing herself to be vulnerable.   
  
“Come now, I thought we were past that.” Koschei looks down at his hand as his thumb runs along the curve of the hilt.    
  
Anger flares again, acting in stark opposition to his sad calm. Despite every ounce of her common sense screaming at the top of its lungs, demanding that she calm down and listen to him, she desperately  _ wants _ to believe that her own claims are true. In this moment, she  _ needs _ him to be terrible. She needs an excuse to bottle up her fear and refuse to express that kind of vulnerability to him. She is willing to embrace the idea of love when it is comfortable, but not when it is hard. Just like in their first exchanges of blows, she is willing to take, but she is still stubbornly unwilling to give.    
  
Especially not on a day like today.    
  
Her grip tightens on the blade and she takes a step forward. He raises his own, ready to meet her. She strikes widely and wildly, and for all her effort and exertion, she cannot get near him. He is faster than she is, better trained than she is, and he does not allow his rage to blind him. He channels it and hones it into something usable. She lashes out at everything and anything, regardless of its culpability in her pain, and today, she's lashing out at him. It's not fair. He did nothing aside from misread the demands of the situation, but she doesn't bother to care.    
  
With fluid ease, he disarms her again, and this time, she does not chase down the fallen weapon.    
  
Tears gather in the corners of her eyes and she wipes them away with the back of her hand. She doesn’t know what she feels anymore. She feels everything and nothing all at once, and it’s so overwhelming that she trembles beneath its weight.    
  
Koschei takes a step forward and slips the cold, dull point of his own blade beneath Theta’s chin, guiding it steadily upward until she is looking at him again. He considers her for a long while, thoughtfulness knotted across his brow, and she attempts to steel her face into something as immutable as his mask. It does not work. Pain and uncertainty seep through the cracks, and she is unable to stop it.   
  
“You’re allowed to be afraid, love.”   
  
She rages against the observation, knocking his blade aside with the butt of her hand. “I’m not afraid.”   
  
They both know that it’s a lie.   
  
“I am,” he says in the same dry, matter-of-fact tone with which he declared his love for her all those days ago. “I’m afraid for our tributes, I’m afraid of you, and I’m afraid of this current that runs between us.”    
  
“I’m not afraid of  _ you _ ,” she snaps, fervently clinging to the last scraps of her wounded pride.    
  
A glimmer of cold amusement cuts through his quiet sadness. “Maybe not, but you’re afraid of other things.”    
  
His words lay her bare, and pain and anger wrap around her heart, pulling so tightly that they threaten to stop it from beating altogether. For a moment, she forgets how to think. She forgets how to breathe. She forgets that her casual cruelty -- the very thing that she claims to not be able to abide -- spurred him to dissect her in the first place. And, for a moment, she manages to  _ hate _ him again, but it’s not the cool, distant hate with which they used to meet each other. It is hot and passionate and all-consuming, but it is fleeting, and woefully undermined by the faintest twinge of regret as the memory of her dreadful words comes creeping back into the front of her mind.    
  
Her lip curls and a muscle in her jaw tightens as she digs her heels in deeper. Not out of anger, this time, but out of an overwhelming sense of  _ shame _ .    
  
Koschei steps forward again, but Theta matches it with another step backward, passing out of the circle and raising her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m done.”  
  
A sigh trails from Koschei’s lungs as he tosses his own blade to the floor in a crash of metal on concrete. Theta flinches slightly at the noise, looking at him in surprise. He is usually so careful with the tools that are made available to them here, wiping things clean before and after use and returning everything to the place where he found it. She assumed that it was a habit drilled into him over years of herding tributes and feigning the persona that earned him his position as the Master, the Darling of the Capitol, and never paid it much mind, but the sudden starkness of this departure from normalcy leaves her shaken.    
  
“Are you --” she starts to ask, before the words die on her tongue. She hurt him, and more importantly, she did so on purpose, while actively knowing that it was the wrong thing to do. It seems foolish to ask if he is okay. He’s not, and it’s her fault. She has finally found those limits that she teasingly tested for the other day, and she did not even intend to.    
  
Her eyes follow him as he stalks back towards the pair of chairs in the corner and sinks into his own, running a frustrated hand through first his beard then his hair.    
  
Theta remains where she is, feet stubbornly planted on the floor.    
  
Silence forms a rift in the air between them, and it lingers for so long that it begins to feel permanent. It sinks into her skin. It further strengthens her nagging sense of regret, and for a moment, her fear is no longer built upon the fear of vulnerability, but instead upon the fear that she might have lost him forever. It’s different, it’s terrifying, and it forces her to reconsider the wantonness with which she attacked him. The fear of losing someone who loves you is not a fear that can be met with rage and anger and stubbornness, it’s a fear that can only be met by admitting when you’re wrong and choosing the difficult path over the easy one.    
  
It takes time, but after a good, long while, Theta’s fingers begin to curl into a fist, nails pressing angry lines into the soft flesh of her palms, and slowly and painfully, her resolve gives way to quiet, shaking sobs. “I’m sorry,” she says. The words are difficult to speak aloud, and even once they are free of her lips, she still feels chained to them.    
  
Koschei glances up in surprise, and though hurt and fear still line his face, something else lurks just beneath. “Thank you,” he says simply. For once, he does not press the point. He does not ask her to justify her actions or fight to justify them for her. He does not try to close the distance between them. He just offers her his forgiveness and the space that she desires.    
  
For a while, that’s all there is -- quiet distance and unearned forgiveness and resigned separation.    
  
Eventually, however, Theta rallies up her broken courage and speaks a devastating truth to that empty space between them. It is a peace offering, a desperate attempt to undo the damage that has already been done and win the forgiveness that he has already extended to her.    
  
“I’m afraid of falling in love.”   
  
Her voice is so quiet that she wonders if he even hears it.    
  
The seconds tick away. She is painfully aware of each and every one of them as they slip through her fingers. Each second makes her fear and regret sink a little bit deeper, cut a little bit sharper.   
  
After a few long minutes that stretch into eternity, Koschei stands, tucking his hands in his pockets and looking at her with an expression that could shatter even the hardest of hearts.    
  
“If it counts for anything, I’ll catch you.”   
  
She swallows, averts her eyes, and admits the most horrifying thing of all.    
  
“I know.”   



	28. Chapter 28

Head tilted expectantly, Koschei waits for Theta to say something else.    
  
Theta’s mind buzzes and her heart races and her tongue turns to lead in her mouth. She knows where he stands and what he wants from her, but she also knows that she is still unwilling to meet him there. She is not in love. She is perched on its precipice, unsure whether or not she is willing to let go. Her fear isn’t just about knowing whether or not he is willing to cushion her fall; it is also about clinging to the world that she knows rather than venturing into the unknown.    
  
Theta does not know what loving Koschei will look like. She does not know how high the flames will blaze or whether or not they will ever grow large enough to match his. She does not know if she’s ready to open herself up to the possibility of finding love only to have it ripped away from her again, and though she knows that he will try to help her navigate these unknowns, that does not alter the fact that her life will change --  _ she _ will change -- and she’s not yet ready to surrender to the inevitable. 

Words fail her, and she swallows and turns her eyes away.    
  
Disappointment flickers across Koschei’s face, deepening the pain that already lurks behind his gaze. With a great sigh, he turns to leave, and Theta follows.   
  
As they enter the brisk outdoor air and begin the walk towards the relative comfort of the apartment building, the awkward distance between them crackles with anticipation. Theta doesn’t know what she is waiting for, exactly -- a smile, a reassurance that everything will be okay, a brush of fingers in the dimming light of the evening -- but nothing comes. They simply walk several feet apart and slightly out of step, and Koschei does not afford her so much as a passing glance over his shoulder.   
  
Were they following their old patterns, such behavior would have stirred resentment in her chest, built upon the assumption that he has always believed that he is a thorn in her side, but they are not following their old patterns. The dance has changed -- he is in love, she is lost, the world around them has been thrust from its axis, and most importantly, she _ hurt him _ . So instead of resentment, guilt claws at the inside of her arching heart, begging for release. She wants a word, a gesture, anything that proves that she is forgiven and that everything will be fine.    
  
Koschei offers nothing of the sort. He does, however, hold the door open for Theta upon their re-entrance into the building. Perhaps she should thank him for the small courtesy, but in the wake of the sorrow and anger that rushed between them, it feels more like a hollow gesture than a genuine kindness.    
  
Theta does not wait for him before stepping into the elevator and hitting the button for their floor, and the doors almost threaten to shut out Koschei entirely, but at the last second, he slips through with a shrug of his shoulders and offers her a small, pointed cough. For a long series of seconds, Koschei’s tongue works at one of his incisors, and it almost seems as though he might say something, but then nothing comes.    
  
Theta's anticipation and guilt grow heavier.    
  
Silence reigns for several nervous heartbeats before Theta grows so uncomfortable that she surrenders to the compulsion to end it.    
  
“I hate this elevator,” she says to no one in particular. Fingers wrap tightly around the railing as she leans back against the glass, staring up at the ceiling as the floor beneath them rushes upward.    
  
Koschei tears his gaze from the nothingness that he was contemplating and turns his attention to her, eyes glazed with tired resignation. “And that’s my fault, I suppose.”    
  
“No, it isn't.” Theta speaks the words on a sigh, but she means them with her whole heart. They carry the enormous weight of grief and history. She doubts that Koschei will believe them -- just as she refuses to believe him whenever he dares to expose his thoughts -- but she tries anyway.    
  
Koschei looks away from her again, face hardening into the unreadable mask. He says nothing -- offers nothing -- and after a moment of hesitation, Theta wets her lips and soldiers on with the story. She’s trying to distract from this pain, trying to do a magic trick designed to make him forget how much she hurt him, but magic only works on the uninitiated.   
  
“It’s the first step of a death march, isn’t it? Well, maybe not the first step. Fourth step, maybe? Aside from the train, it was the first thing that really struck me as being different, really screamed that I was entering a world that I wasn’t meant to be in. I didn’t think about this... _ stuff _ ...when I was a child. Having a place to stay was enough, usually, since there was a time I didn’t even have that, and all of the extra felt cold and empty and horrible and everyone around me was telling me that it was everything I should be striving for. I hated it long before I hated you.”   
  
And, most notably, she hated it long before he pressed her into a corner, tore her armor apart, and laid her bare beneath his words. Of course, that did not help the situation, but it did not precipitate it, either. It would be wrong to say otherwise, and she’s trying to move past making claims that she cannot substantiate. The incident in the training room hurt them both, and though it had been difficult to apologize, it is even harder to attempt to soothe the fresh wound that twists and rages between them.    
  
Koschei’s fingers tap against the outside of his thigh as he listens, and he does not reply until the doors whoosh open and they step into the unforgivingly yellow light of the hallway. “As fascinating as your history might be, Theta, I’m not particularly interested in hearing it right now. The world does not revolve around how you feel."   
  
“So let’s talk about something else then,” she says, frantically searching for something amicable with which to chase away that wretched, cloying, vengeful silence and the pain that haunts it. “Let’s talk about home, or technology, or flowers, or history, or --”   
  
“Theta.” The name is a sharp warning. It stills her tongue and cuts her list short.    
  
The sigh that follows is both long and pensive. It is the sigh of a man who doesn’t have the energy to continue fighting. "I'm hurting, and if you're not going to say anything meaningful, then I'm not particularly interested in listening."    
  
Confusion and desperation settle across her face. “But it's --"   
  
Koschei interrupts her before she has a chance to finish the thought. “Important to you. I know. I've spent days upon days listening to things that are important to you, and you rarely turn your attention anywhere else.”

Tears of frustration gather in her eyes, but she bars them from falling. "I don't know what you want."

Koschei scoffs, theatrically flinging his arm into the empty air before him. "You do."

He's right, Theta does know what he wants. He wants love and a partnership and a rebellion. She said that she is afraid of falling in love, but that's not quite the same as admitting that she is actually falling in love. She knows it, he knows it, the entire world knows it, and she can no longer cling to ignorance as a viable defense.

"I can't give you that.” There’s a pause, as she gathers up the courage to tack on a difficult addendum. “Not yet, anyway." 

"You could, if you put half a mind to considering the damage that your pride does to other people and stopped focusing on soothing your own conscience. I told you I'd catch you, Theta, but that doesn't do us any good if you shove your heels into the mud and keep denying the obvious. You wouldn't be afraid if you weren't feeling something."

His pace increases slightly as he seeks to draw ahead of her -- no doubt to keep her from seeing the pain in his face -- but she ignores the hint and hurries to match him.    
  
“Koschei --”   
  
“Do be quiet, Theta.”    
  
No  _ love _ , no  _ dear _ , just an endless string of  _ Thetas _ .   
  
Though she did not find any particular joy in the pet names before, she is distinctly aware of their absence now. It marks the space she struck between them, the festering wounds, the damaging moment that she would very much like to take back and can’t.    
  
For several steps, Theta fumbles for something to say -- something that might be able to  _ fix _ this the way that she fixes cameras and monitors and radios -- but in the end, she bites her tongue. If she is continuing to refuse to say the things that he wants her to say, then speaking would only twist the knife. She cannot keep falling into the same trap she fell into in the training facility. She cannot keep putting her own needs and desires before his.    
  
She is not ready declare love, but he asked her to be quiet, and though every cell in her body screams that she needs to  _ do _ something, she slows down, shoves her hands into her pockets, and says nothing at all. He granted her space, and in turn, she can give him quiet.   
  
Theta wishes that Amy was here. Amy would know what to do. Amy always knows what to do. Amy is a proud believer in love, and she is always,  _ always _ willing to offer a word of advice to the needy. Theta doesn’t know whether or not it is good advice, per say, but having some degree of guidance, however flawed it may be, is far better than being thrust into a dark labyrinth and being told to navigate it alone.

Perhaps Amy's advice  _ would _ involve moving past admitting her fears and beginning to embrace them. Perhaps Amy would press Theta until she began to freely speak and think of love. Perhaps she would resent hearing those harsh truths from Amy's lips as much as she hates hearing them from Koschei's, but surely there is a certain comfort to be found in Amy’s certainty, and despite all the confidence that Koschei projects, despite how firmly he stands by his needs and desires and his commitment to loving the unlovable, he is riddled with uncertainty. It lingers on the breath that he coats in a thick layer of peppermint before he dares to be near her. It lines every inch of the mask that he has crafted for the delight of the people. It exists in every fidgeting twitch of his fingers and every restless demand for her cooperation. It permeated the words he spoke down his lifted blade during their argument. 

_"I'm afraid,” he said. "I'm afraid of you."  
  
_Koschei so rarely shows true fear that in the moment itself, she assumed that he was bluffing for her sake. However, she can see how that fear is evident in the way that he is avoiding her now, in the way that he is cutting her out unless she agrees to say the words that he so desperately needs to hear, in the way that Koschei is horribly, terribly afraid that she might never love him in the way that he loves her. Compassion sparks in her chest, and for a brief and fleeting moment, she stops fearing the act of falling in love and instead, she begins to fear that her love for him might never equal his, that whatever love she might grow to have will never be enough to heal wounds and close the gaping canyon that has opened in the ground between then. At some point, she might be able to build a bridge strong enough that she dares to cross it and trusts it to support her weight, but she does not think that she can move mountains. A love that strong would surely be undeniable, and she's done nothing but deny it.  
  
  
  
When they finally reach the District 3 apartment, Theta and Koschei take up positions on opposite ends of the sitting room and wait for the Tributes to return. Koschei busies himself in front of a screen, flipping through the clips from the tribute demonstrations, racing through the careers on double speed until he reaches their children.   
  
Theta refuses to so much as glance up at the recordings, and has snatched the remote from their bedroom and begun disassembling it with the set of screwdrivers that she bought at the market the other day, back when she dared to open herself up to a moment of peace. There isn’t much she can do to change the remotes function without a soldering iron, so she simply takes it apart and puts it back together over and over again to fill space and keep her hands busy. It’s cyclical and rhythmic, the perfect distraction from a pain that is also cyclical and rhythmic. It swells and abates on good days and bad days, and she is desperately sorry that she took a bad day and made it worse.   
  
She wonders if Koschei has the same bad days that she does, if he, too, is attuned to the path of the Games and its many pits and valleys, but she cannot ask him. Not now. Not after he asked for quiet. For now, she can only guess based on the insistence with which he asked her to participate in his sparring, in the way that he let down his guard and his pride for long enough to both be profoundly hurt and allow her to see it, that he, too, was already bleeding when the day began.   
  
Theta knows that she should look up from her tinkering long enough to at least peek at the footage of the tributes and see how they fared before the final numbers are revealed by Caesar Flickerman later this evening, but she cannot bear to see more violence, even in the relative safety of the demonstration setting. On a normal day, she might be able to handle it, but not after a pair of faux swords impaled both her and Koschei deeply enough to cause real damage.   
  
Koschei exhales sharply through his nose as Rennette takes the floor. Theta does not ask why. She is sure that she will find out soon enough, whenever the children come walking in and start to brag or seek comfort or whatever it is that their instincts spur them to during these late stages of preparation. Though she knows their typical patterns, she does not know what to expect from them tonight. People become less and less predictable as more and more pressure is applied. She would not be surprised if Sparrow suddenly lapsed into sad silence and Rennette began loudly and enthusiastically searching for attention. Trauma and fear have a tendency to rewrite personalities.   
  
Theta knows that as well as anyone.   
  
Eventually, the front door finally opens, and Romana enters, followed by two shell-shocked children with stooping shoulders and nervous, jumping eyes.   
  
Almost immediately, Koschei turns off the monitor and rises to his feet. Theta glances up from her work, but she does not abandon it, nor does she stir from her stubbornly maintained position of distance from him.   
  
“How did it go?” Koschei asks, looking from one child to the other with a feigned optimism that almost seems to suggest that he watched nothing at all. It is convincing. Were Theta not witness to it, she would have assumed that he hadn’t.   
  
Sparrow grumbles his displeasure.  
  
Rennette offers up only a vague, “I think it went as well as it could have.”   
  
Theta is not entirely sure whether or not it is a sentiment based on hope or pessimism -- or is only meant to ease the horrible tension that pervades the room -- and she does not bother to wager a guess. She merely nods and moves her screwdriver from one hand to the other in a fidgeting, desperate bid to feel productive. It doesn’t work. Instead, her eyes slowly drift away from the children and come to rest on Romana.   
  
After several heartbeats, Romana’s head turns and their gazes meet. Her eyes narrow as she reads whatever expression has settled into the lines of Theta’s face, and a small frown flickers across her own.   
  
Theta opens her mouth, prepared to launch a protest about whatever assumptions Romana might have leapt to, but she doesn’t have a chance to say anything at all before the Capitol representative turns on her heel and stalks towards the kitchen, announcing, “I think we could all do with a cup of tea after that excitement.”   
  
No one bothers to argue, but no one raises their voice in agreement either.   
  
The quietness that follows is just as painful and permeating as the many periods of silence that have preceded it, but there is no rage for Theta to cling to for relief, only regret and the slinking sense of dread. She does not dare to be angry again, not after how deeply it betrayed her.   
  
After a moment, Koschei sinks back into his chair and turns the monitor back on, flipping to the live broadcast in anticipation of the scores that should be announced at the top of the hour. The noise fills the space, but it means nothing. It heals nothing. Theta cannot even seem to pick out individual words from amidst the buzz. She lacks the heart and the energy to focus on anything but that oozing, bleeding rift and the fact it hasn’t gotten any smaller.   
  
Restless worry begins to rise with Theta, itching just beneath the surface of her skin, and she is once again tempted to start babbling to fill both the void in her heart and the hollowness of the room, but a knock splits the silence. From their respective positions on opposite ends of the room, both Theta and Koschei flinch at the suddenness of the noise. Romana sweeps across the floor with a slightly indignant huff, wondering aloud about what visitor might dare to call at this hour.   
  
Theta expects there to be an exchange of words at the door or for Amy Pond to come striding in with a smile on her lips, but there is nothing except another painful moment of silence. Eventually, the door closes, and Romana steps back into view. A red envelope is perched neatly between the pads of the woman's fingers, held so delicately that it almost seems that she is afraid to handle it.  
  
Propelled by fear, Theta’s racing heart rises into the back of her throat and she stands, sending the mangled remote tumbling to the ground. This time, however, the letter isn’t for her. Romana walks straight past Theta and hands the letter to Koschei.   
  
Koschei breaks the President’s seal without noise or comment and scans the message within. His brows contract with concern as he peers at another piece of paper hidden within the confines of the envelope. With a gruff sigh, he rises to his feet and shoves the entire affair into the inside breast pocket of his jacket before retreating down the hallways and towards the bedrooms. Theta hears the faint sound of a door closing behind him.  
  
Throughout the entire process, he does not so much as glance at Theta, and she knows better than to try to follow him. He clearly does not want her there, and someone needs to sit with the tributes while they hear their fates broadcast to the world. After the insight that Amy offered several days ago -- the whispers of the burdens that Romana tends to shoulder while Theta and Koschei mire in their own misery -- Theta refuses to let Romana and the tributes suffer through the announcements alone. She will do what she can here, and she will hope that if Koschei needs something, he will see past the hurt that she has caused and the love that she cannot yet provide and reach out a hand.   
  
However, Koschei does not reemerge for the rest of the evening, and Theta cannot seem to stop herself from glancing over her shoulder every few moments, wondering whether or not he is shattering into pieces somewhere just out of sight. 


	29. Chapter 29

It is several hours before Theta gathers the willpower required to slide open the bedroom door. For a long time, she considered sleeping on the couch and waiting for him to come to her, but as the night grew darker and her worry for Koschei increased, she thought better of the idea.    
  
“Can we talk?” she asks as she sticks her head through the gap and peered around the corner.    
  
Koschei does not appear to have moved in hours. He is lying on his back with his fist braced in the dead center on his forehead, staring up at the unforgivingly blank canvas of the ceiling with a slightly glazed expression. He did not even bother to kick his shoes off before collapsing, an oversight that falls more in line with Theta’s chaotic mix of inconsiderate habits than his own. The offending letter sits open at his side, its contents spread across Theta’s half of the bed, and it takes every ounce of her self-control to refrain from tilting her head and trying to figure out what it says. If she has any hope of bridging the gap between them, then she has to trust him. If he wants to tell her, then he’ll tell her.    
  
Koschei does not so much as look at her when he answers her question with a snide remark. “Seems like you already are. Don’t let me stop you.”    
  
Theta bristles with slight affront, but she swallows back her harsher instincts in favor of attempting something that might vaguely resemble compassion. She knows how letters from the President often have a habit of pulling the rug from beneath one’s feet and tearing the soul asunder. He has suffered a thousand searing remarks from her, and she has survived her fair share of his. She can abide a few more.    
  
Theta wets her lips and takes a careful step forward, stepping into a puddle of bright pink neon light that seeps through the open blinds. It glimmers in her eyes and softly caresses the gently sloping angles of her face. “Do you want to know the scores?”   
  
“I don’t know. Do I?” His voice breaks from disuse, and Theta cannot help but wonder if he dared to cry before lapsing into whatever destructive, hollow silence plagued him before she walked in. She would hardly blame him if he did. After all, she spent two entire days suffering through quiet tears and broken sobs after her last communication with the President. They are not the same, but they carry similar trauma. She does not doubt that he, too, is shaken in his own way.    
  
A shrug flits across Theta’s shoulders, as light and ephemeral as the brush of a shadow. “I am not a mind-reader, Koschei.”   
  
“You have made that abundantly clear already. Thank you, Theta.”    
  
His lip curls and the words snap, but Theta steadies herself and takes another step closer, stepping out of the pool of pink and into a wash of bright blue.    
  
“Would you rather talk about something else?” It takes great effort to keep the words controlled and her expression open, but she exerts it. For him. If he had been present when the President ripped her apart, she would have wanted him to do the same -- to shove anger and selfishness and grudges aside and be better than they were the day before. If she is holding him to those standards, then she ought to at least  _ attempt _ to meet them herself. It is hard. It is difficult. It involves holding her chin high, letting go of anger, and choosing the difficult and unknown over the easy and familiar, but she is  _ trying _ . “I gave you a list earlier. Any of that is still up for grabs, if you want. Or you can add to it. Doesn’t much matter to me.”   
  
Koschei scoffs. “Would you even listen if I did?”   
  
Theta frowns, and though she is still fighting to keep her anger at bay, she can feel it gathering in the pit of her stomach. At her side, her fingers curl into a tight fist before relaxing it again. It gives her a place to channel her tension before dispelling it again. After a careful, steadying breath, she asks, “Are you being difficult on purpose?”    
  
“You’re difficult. I’m difficult. Every person who has ever dared to win the Games is difficult. Maybe we’re just difficult people.” Some of his derision falls away, replaced by the begrudging acknowledgement that sometimes the world is what it is. It is not quite the same as the hollow nothingness into which Theta retreats when the weight of her guilt and sorrow grow too heavy, but it is not all that different either. It is its softer kin, molded for someone who still cares what other people think of him and clings to persona and projection to survive.   
  
“You knew that when we met. That’s not news.” As a tribute, Theta may not have been as aggressive as she became in later years, but she was a handful. She talked Graham O’Brien’s ears off in the cab on the way to the train. She dug into every lesson. She provoked the rest of the field and the officials who were assigned to watch her demonstration, and she walked perilously close to sharing blows with Caesar Flickerman during her interview on the night before the Games began, foretelling the tense future that awaited them. If Koschei had bothered to pay attention to her, he, too, would have been caught in the crossfire. She possessed no family and nothing to fight for except for the petty desire to prove everyone wrong and an unlikely, unkillable instinct to survive, which bred a peculiar pattern of behavior.    
  
Koschei’s eyes flash, and his hand falls away from his face as he rolls onto his side and props himself up on his forearm. Satisfaction and relief flutter in her chest. He is arguing, he is debating, but at least he’s not trapped in whatever quiet darkness tempted him. “I thought you were boring when we met. You only got interesting when you won the Games.”    
  
It’s a lie. She knows it’s a lie. He may have refused to teach her, but that does not mean that he did not observe. He betrayed as much on the train a couple weeks ago when he spoke to her skill with a dagger. “You didn’t talk to me when we met,” she points out, playing into his claims just enough to keep him here, keep him grounded.    
  
“Fair enough, I suppose. You looked boring, and that was more than enough for me.” His hands fidget in front of him, idly spinning a ring on his pointer finger. Almost by instinct, Theta curls her own fingers, rubbing the pad of her thumb across the band of her engagement ring. When she first started wearing it, it felt like an anchor dragging her down, but lately, she has almost started to forget that it’s there. It has begun to blend into the background as if this is the way that things have always been.   
  
Her head tilts, bright eyes flitting between Koschei’s features. “But then that changed.”   
  
A sigh spills from his lungs and falls to the bed. He does not look at her, keeping his gaze fixed on the ring as he continues to turn it over and over again. “It did.”   
  
She dares to push him a little further, to press a little harder, to take the plunge from relatively safe territory into potentially perilous subjects. “I heard the explanation of why you abandoned me, but you never apologized, you know.”   
  
Koschei dares to meet Theta’s eyes, and she can see the neon lights shining back at her in their depths, obscuring whatever truths lurk within their depths.“Why would I? It wouldn’t have changed anything, and you hardly would have been willing to accept it.”   
  
Theta clasps her hands behind her back and sweeps her foot in a small arc on the floor, feeling the toe of her shoe glide across the smooth surface, passing through puddles of blue and pink and green. After a pause, she once again opts to say the difficult thing instead of falling back behind her old, spine-riddled battlements. Perhaps it is the veil provided by the darkness, but she thinks that it might be getting a bit easier to open up, to bear harboring thoughts that might render her vulnerable. “I wouldn’t have before, but maybe I would now. I apologized to you earlier. Wouldn’t’ve done that a week ago.”   
  
With a breath he turns his head, shrouding his face in shadow. “You’d do anything to save your own skin.” The words are too quiet to be a genuine attack, lined with more sadness than anger.   
  
“My skin wasn’t in danger. You’re in a proper mood, aren’t you?” Theta finally moves from the spot in which she has been standing, circling around to her side of the bed and perching on the very edge. The artificial cast of light still reaches her there, but it is a muddied mix of slightly faded hues.    
  
Koschei huffs, rolling onto his back and returning his gaze to that immutable, boring ceiling. She follows it for a moment, trying to see what he sees, but comes to the conclusion that he’s only doing it to avoid her.    
  
“Why wouldn’t I be in a mood?” he says. “The Games are dawning, you decided to sink your teeth in, and I got a very,  _ very _ abrasive letter from the man that I’m trying to overthrow. Hardly a recipe for a good time.”

He’s trying to bait her, but she doesn’t take it.    
  
Her shoulders straighten and she picks at a loose thread in the blanket that they share. "I'm not demanding that you have a good time. I'm just trying to talk."

"Isn’t that what you do, though? You hide behind accidental charm and blabber on about raccoons to distract people from the present and make them pretend that everything is okay when it’s not."   
  
It is rare to catch Koschei in a moment where he is entirely misguided -- even when he’s off the mark, he normally clips its edge -- but he has thoroughly overlooked the truth here. Given that he has chosen to use performance as a shield for so long, it is not surprising that he would assume that she has been doing the same. 

Her correction is uncharacteristically gentle. "No. I do it to distract myself, mostly."

His eyebrows raise, and those eyes shift slightly, catching her gaze in their periphery. "And that's different how?" 

"Just is. Don’t tell me you didn’t take up those stupid magic tricks because they made you happy at first. Maybe now they’re a tool for hoodwinking the masses, but back when you were practicing in your room alone, who were they for then?”   
  
Koschei’s gaze turns away again, and he lapses into stubborn silence. Theta doesn’t think that she hurt him again. It looks like he’s thinking. Maybe he underestimated how alert she can be when she’s sufficiently motivated. Though she does not possess Koschei’s particular flair for mastering people with the power of observation, she is plenty sharp when she wants to be.    
  
She takes advantage of his brief moment of quiet to circle back around to the point she was trying to make before he derailed the conversation entirely. “Are you gonna keep dodging the fact that I mentioned that you never apologized?"

With great effort and a heavy sigh, Koschei braces his palms against the mattress and hauls himself into a seated position, leaning back against the bed frame. After a moment’s pause, he brings his legs in close, beginning to work at the laces of his shoes."If I had the chance to live those moments again, I would have kept my head, but in all fairness, you've spent your entire career subjecting tributes to the exact same treatment. The only difference is that they’ve all died and you’ve never been forced to confront it."

Her heartbeat quickens and her hand shakes as she continues to pick at the offending thread. "I did not."

"You did. I buckled down and did the work and learned my lesson from that first time around. I swallowed my fear response and murdered my empathetic instincts and did what I had to do. You never quite managed that until this year, did you?"

Anger flashes in her eyes -- bright and hot and searing as her tongue crafts a pointed attack. "I thought you were tired of conversations being about me, or do the rules change as soon as you don't like the picture that I'm painting?"

He kicks off his shoes and meets her with fire of his own, words spitting and stare burning through her as he says, "Look at that, Theta Lungbarrow is angry again. Will the wonders never cease?"

Theta takes a second to rein in her temper, dampening it enough to soften her edges as she observes. "So are you." 

He doesn’t acknowledge the critique, instead soldiering ever onward with his train of thought. "Are you angry because you hate me or because you don't like having your flaws pointed out?”

Theta could attack him, could return the point in kind and turn this into a battle of wills and insults, but that will not heal their wounds. She wanted to be a doctor once, she spent her youth fixing broken electronics on the factory floor, and perhaps it's time to put that desire to make things better to decent use. Instead of fighting, she gathers herself, sorts emotions into truths and explains what stoked the flames. "I'm angry because every time I start to like you, you start picking me apart. It's not very pleasant."

Koschei does not quite manage to match her calm -- his words are still manic, his hand still fishes through the empty air in a gesture meant to drive the words home -- but he does not escalate. He does not allow his fire to spread. "You were needling mine. What am I supposed to do? Suffer through whatever barbs you throw at me and never fight back? That hardly seems fair.” 

"You could apologize. That’s all I wanted.”

He turns his head towards the window and draws his knees up, locking his pointer fingers together as he rests his arms on his knees. The light from outside etches the lines of his profile against the darkness. He is striking. He has always been striking. It helped him carve out the path on which he walks, the journey of the golden boy, cloaked by praise and adoration and an eerily specific brand of suffering.    
  
An age passes -- marked by steady heartbeats and the quiet anticipation of the inevitable -- and Theta waits it out. She does not surrender to the impulse to fill it. She simply trusts that maybe, just maybe, he will finally grant her that single moment of genuine empathy.   
  
Eventually, he whispers, “I’m so sorry for failing you.”   
  
The light glances off a single tear -- refracted into a multicolored gem that lingers for so long that it seems to defy gravity.   
  
A muscle unknots in Theta’s neck, and she feels suddenly lighter, as if history has been unwritten and she might be able to conquer the world.    
  
“Thank you,” she breathes, the words light and airy and surprisingly intimate given the space between them.    
  
Koschei remains fixed upon the window, and he does not offer her anything else. She forgets, sometimes, that navigating whatever this relationship is must be just as difficult for him as it is for her -- that he, too, has fifteen years of pain and grudges and stubborn pride to shove aside. After all, when he first admitted that he loved her, the words were flanked by an admission of self-loathing. His feelings might be clearer, but that does not mean that he does not struggle.   
  
As he observed, they are both difficult people.    
  
They have always been difficult, and perhaps they always will be. Perhaps this will never resemble the quiet love that lies between Amy and Rory and the hundreds of couples that call their district home, but perhaps that is okay.

After a moment, Theta breaks the silence, twisting his name into the shape of a question that she had almost forgotten to ask amidst the chaos. "Koschei?” 

"Yes, love?" 

She notices the shift away from the strikingly cold  _ Thetas _ of the afternoon and back into the gentle caress of  _ loves _ , but she does not comment on it. She is worried that if she does, she might scare them away. Or, even worse, she might be expected to return them. The very thought makes her wrinkle her nose. Even if there is love somewhere, buried deep beneath the confused noise, she doesn’t think that pet names are her style.    
  
"What's in the letter?" Theta finally asks, inclining her head towards the pile of papers beside him.

Koschei sweeps his hand towards the mess with a lofty, almost dismissive air. "You can read it if you like. It's not long. surprised you didn't read it already."

She reaches towards the mess, sweeping up the papers into a pile and gathering them in her hands. "I was trying not to be rude."

A dark eyebrow quirks upwards and amusement purrs beneath the words. Things are not back to the way they had been before the fight, but the course is smoother now, falling back into its usual cadence as anger and pain give way to something else entirely. "Were you?" 

Theta dares to roll her eyes. "You needn’t sound so surprised,” she says, but her tongue stills as soon as she casts an eye over the single line of tight script that marks the message.   
  


_ You owe us a kiss.  
  
  
_

She flips through the rest of the letter’s contents -- attentive gaze flicking over a series of black and white stills from security cameras. There they are, exchanging blows and words in the tense atmosphere of the training facility, drawing close and stepping apart again. She is glad that she cannot make out the expressions on their faces, or perhaps the wrath and resentment might have dared to kindle in her belly yet again. After a moment, she tosses the entire affair back across the bed and crosses her arms over her chest.   


"It's not even a threat,” she comments. “I would’ve expected something more from him. A hostage, or a knife, or a vial of your own blood, maybe.” Her thoughts are edging back towards the absurd and surreal territory in which raccoon uprisings tend to dwell, but it keeps him distant, keeps her safe from thoughts of the evil to which he subjected her mere days ago. 

Koschei sighs, and she hears a rustling as he shoves the entire affair onto the floor. "The threat's implied. If I don’t do it, there will be consequences."

Determination sparks, and Theta even manages to surprise herself as she turns to him and declares, "So then do it." It is inevitable, after all, and her own mind has dwelled upon the idea on more than one occasion. As loathe as she is to admit it, she might even fancy the thought of it. There are worse things than kissing a friend, and for all the fighting and the tension, she thinks that they have managed to become friends. They hold conversations and dare to speak truths and sometimes, they even share the same values. If she is friends with Amy and Romana, then she must be friends with Koschei, too.

Something unreadable slides into his expression as he says, "I'd really rather not, given the circumstances."

Offense and disappointment mix and mingle as a confused trench digs into the space between her eyebrows. "What happened to all the dramatic declarations of love?" 

"You picked a fight with me instead of just telling me no." Koschei is retreating back behind a wall built of obvious half-truths, and Theta notices.    
  
She meets his decision with a derisive sniff, refusing to take the bait and be drawn back into a fight. "Must have been a pretty feeble excuse of love, then."

He flinches slightly as he realizes that he’s been caught in the act of obfuscation, and there’s a long pause as he forces his muscles to relax and his tongue to unknot. "Hardly. I'm not going to kiss you if you're not interested in it. Would rather not do it period. Probably better if it's your idea, all things considered." 

Theta blinks once, and turns at the waist, leaning forward ever so slightly as the space between them contracts. "I could do it."

Koschei’s head turns, gaze lingering first upon her eyes and then upon her lips. "Would you mean it?"

It is a complicated question, and she does not pretend to know the answer. Committing to either extreme would do them a great disservice, and they both worked hard to claw their way back here and re-establish a sense of relative peace, however tenuous that peace may be. After a pensive breath, she says honestly, "I don’t know, but I would be willing to do it to keep the President out of our affairs."  
  
Koschei stands in a single fluid motion and walks around the bed. Theta watches him move -- a question perched upon her parted lips -- but she does not dare to ask it. He stops before her and sinks to his knees in front of her. She straightens slightly, alarm flickering in her expression, drawing her hands back into her lap and retreating into herself. She does not know what to expect, has never quite managed to put a finger on his intentions whenever he falls into theatrics.    
  
Gently, he reaches out a hand.    
  
Theta hesitates for a moment -- breathing shallow and worry evident -- but if she could trust him a moment ago, she can still trust him now. She places her shaking hand in his own. The stone on her engagement ring twinkles in the scant light as he draws it close, rubbing his thumbs over the skin of her palms. A balm for the question to come.    
  
"What did he do to you, Theta?" The query is dangerously quiet, shrouded in the same tones with which he speaks of rebellions and uprising. 

Theta swallows and turns her eyes away, focusing on the rumpled sheets and the gentle touch of his fingers in order to keep herself from being drawn into the clutches of the past. That's what Koschei intended, she realized. He moved closer to help her, knew he was moving into perilously territory and adjusting the path accordingly. For a passing second, she wants to resent him for manipulating her, but a blink of her eyes and a catch of his gaze proves that this isn't manipulation. It is respect and care and _love_ , and despite her fear and misgivings, she is shockingly grateful for it.  
  
It takes time before she is able to cobble together a coherent thought, trying to stay distant enough from the memory itself to avoid from replaying it over and over again. "He replayed the final moment of my Games. I --” The sentence catches on the raw edges of her throat, and it takes a second’s pause before she has the will to soldier onward. “I had never seen it before. Never thought…” She pauses again, and her body shakes as she inhales. “He just watched me suffer. Just waited until it was done.”

Under his breath, Koschei swears.   
  
For a moment, Theta toys with the idea of stopping there, but she braces herself and soldiers onward. “He told me what he wanted from me, and he threatened me, and then I left.”   
  
Silence reigns uncontested for a few long minutes, and it is only Koschei’s steady touch that keeps her anchored.   
  
Eventually, Koschei speaks. "I would have killed him then and there."

"I know." The idea is strangely comforting, and she wraps herself inside it, shielding herself from the darkness. 

After another pause, Koschei asks, "Do you want to kill him?"

"I don't really want to kill anyone." It is an honest enough sentiment. She despises Rassilon, loathes everything that he stands for and the country that he built, but she has enough blood on her hands. No matter how just the cause may be, she does not think that she is capable of drawing more.  
  
Their eyes meet in the space between them, and Koschei’s fingers stop their ideal circles. Curiosity and intensity work their way into his voice as he alters the question ever so slightly. "Would you watch him die?”

Theta nods.    
  
She can see a thought perched upon his face, but it never quite manages to make it to his tongue. Instead, he draws her hand to his lips and plants a single kiss in the center of her palm. The hairs of his beard tickle against her skin, and a shiver races up her arm and down her spine. Its echo reaches the bite on her neck, barely visible in the darkness and behind the waterfall of her hair as she looks down at him.

There is a pause -- filled not with dread, but with hunger and longing and mutual interest.    
  
Neither of them dare to move.    
  
It is several long beats before his shaking hands lower hers and he clears his throat -- bridging the silence with a change of subject. “You mentioned the tributes. What did they score?”   
  
Theta had almost forgotten about the children. It seems like it has been a decade since she entered the room, and even longer since the names and scores were read. 

The words and her tongue are clumsy when she finally answers. "A 6 and a 7. Rennette scored higher."   
  
Koschei releases her hand, and she returns it to her lap. Her skin still burns where he had touched her, but it is not the familiar fire of anger. It is desire, and though desire may not be the same as the love that she so deeply fears, she flushes in embarrassment all the same.    
  
In the dark that surrounds them, Koschei does not notice the change. His own hand rubs his beard and his eyes turn away, tracing out thoughts and possible futures in the air in front of him.. "I can work with that. The President could die this year."    
  
She could ask him for details, could leap from the cliff on which she stands and plunge to the unknown by pledging herself to his cause, but a thread of fear still holds her back.    
  
“On my account.”   
  
Koschei’s eyes flash as he turns back to her. Without thinking, he braces his hands on her knees. “On his.”

Theta’s eyes roam downward, lingering on the places where his touch burns. She wants to draw him out of the darkness and keep herself from it, and she turns her mind away from death and Rassilon to pose a surprisingly innocent question. "Are we friends again?"

In a moment, the mood shifts, and the world outside of this room is entirely forgotten. Koschei's eyebrows lift and lips part in pleased surprise. His hands do not move, but his fingers tighten, pressing into the skin beneath her trousers. "Were we friends? I was under the impression that you considered me your mortal enemy." Teasing curls around the words, arching its back like a cat, but it is undercut by a wary sense of uncertainty that seeps through the cracks and onto the surface.

She doesn’t allow herself to think too long, lest she find herself paralyzed by uncertainty. "That title's been taken. Besides, if I had to pick a person to be locked in a room with, it'd probably be you. I think that makes us friends."

"Not Amy?"

Her shoulder lifts into half a shrug and humor glimmers in her eyes and flutters in her heart, fighting against the seriousness with which her body meets his touch. "Fine, then. You'd be my second choice."

Koschei’s lips curl into a smile that speaks of passion and lust and fifteen years of wanting. "I'd rather be the first. I could think of more ways to entertain you.” A hint of that mask returns, sliding over his gaze as he walks his fingers a few inches further up her legs, tracing a featherlight pattern on the inside of her thigh. He acts bold, but she can feel the small tremble that still wracks his muscles.    
  
Though his touch is still far from scandalous territory, it is closer than anyone has dared to venture in a long time, and Theta balks slightly, nerves fluttering in her stomach and cutting through the hunger that boils in her blood.   
  
She guides his hands away with her own, and leans down to meet him.    
  
“I’m sure you could.” The words are spoken mere inches from his face, and she lets them linger in the air between them before she stands and heads towards the bathroom to ready herself for bed.    
  
Much to her relief, Koschei does not press the issue, and when they finally tuck themselves beneath the blankets, he offers up a quiet, “Good night, love.”    
  
“Good night, Koschei.”   
  
It is a simple gesture of friendliness and care, but it is untrodden ground all the same, and for a brief and fleeting moment, Theta thinks that she could, perhaps, move mountains for him.


	30. Chapter 30

Morning comes far too quickly. 

It is not that Theta dreads the sunlight or the dawning of a new era, rather, she knows the horrors that this day brings. For twenty-three of the twenty-four tributes, this day is their last day to breathe untainted air and eat untainted food, their last day of safety, their last tour among friends before they are sent to their deaths in the Arena. Fifteen years ago, Theta faced this day with pain and rage and shouting. This year, however, she merely groans with quiet, unwilling dread and buries herself deeper beneath the sheets as the light of day begins to worm its way into the room. 

Quite by accident, Theta presses her back into Koschei’s chest, and, still mostly asleep, he lazily wraps an arm around her. She wonders if the action is intentional, if he is entirely aware of what he’s doing.She tenses for a moment, breath catching in her throat, but she does not break the contact. Still slave to his usual morning grogginess, he neither moves nor speaks. After a few worried heartbeats, Theta gives into the warmth of his embrace entirely, allowing her eyes to flutter closed and the gentle lull of sleep to reclaim her.

They should be awake. They should be checking in on tributes and going over notes. They should be ready and waiting for Amy and her team to sink their claws into their hair and slap paint and glitter across their faces, but Theta tries not to think of that. Perhaps if they linger here long enough, they will be forgotten. Perhaps they won’t have to brave the cameras or walk their tributes through the steps. Perhaps the world will be nothing but peace and darkness and the heat of Koschei’s body. For a moment, she clings in that possibility ardently enough to deceive herself into thinking that it might be true, but after stolen minutes begin to verge upon stolen hours, their bedroom door opens and Amy invades. 

“You two should’ve been up ages ago,” Amy growls as she sweeps across the floor. A bitter and demanding clap of her hands punctuates the words. Theta cannot see the woman’s face but she can hear the annoyed way the corners of the woman’s lips curl upwards, the tightness in her lips and on her tongue. Amy may not be journeying to her death, but this is her biggest day of the year. Her career depends upon it. Everyone watches interview day. Everyone speaks about the costumes and the glamor and the styling, and today, Koschei and Theta are to be thrust upon that stage with the tributes. It doubles the pressure. She has to wrangle two pairs instead of just the one. 

A breath trickles against Theta’s neck as Koschei stirs against her back. His arm retreats, baring her waist to the newfound chill of the room and the cotton sheets. The mattress shifts as he pushes himself into a seated position, and his voice is dull and ragged with the weight of the morning.“You could have knocked.” 

“You could’ve gotten up on time,” Amy snaps back at him. “You, too, Theta. Up. Now.”

Theta curls her body in around itself, drawing the blankets in tighter, but a manicured hand snatches them away. 

“Up!”

Theta cracks a single green eye open, squinting against the brightness of the room as she follows the blue blur that marks Amy’s frantic footsteps across the room as she passes from closet to bathroom and back again, fetching items and putting them in the most convenient places. There are other people here, too — assistants who rotate out so quickly that Theta never manages to learn their names. No doubt there are more of them with the tributes, doing hair and brushing on makeup and guiding them into clothes that will be far more glorious than whatever horrible uniform they will be forced to don tomorrow when they enter the Arena. 

“I don’t think the weather called for a hurricane,” Theta grumbles as she drags herself out of bed. The vinyl of the floor is cold beneath her bare feet as she stands bleary-eyed and motionless beside it. She can feel the eyes on her, can feel them dart between her and Koschei, seeking out evidence that would mark the source of their tiredness to spin it into gossip. They won’t find anything. The night ran late for other reasons. 

Across the room, Koschei chuckles. Once, she would have been suspicious of the noise — would have shot him an accusing glare as quick and sharp as the point of a dagger — but she no longer perceives him as an enemy. They are friends, and friends laugh at each other’s jokes. Unless, of course, the friend is the subject of the joke in question. As such, Amy does not laugh nor is she expected to. She simply jerks her chin in the direction of the door. 

“You’re with me, Theta,” Amy says, absolutely humorless. “Get a move on. I’ve got to keep the others in line, too.”

“What an honor. Should I be honored? I feel like I should be honored.” The words should come quickly, but the lingering, interfering remnants of sleep slow them down. Amy raises her eyebrows, ready to fight should the morning come to blows, but it is for naught. Though Theta dreads the oncoming onslaught, she has no desire to get into an altercation with anyone. Not Amy, not Koschei, not Romana, and probably not even Caesar. She behaved herself during their last appearance on his broadcast, and though she is loath to participate in this pageantry again, she plans to behave herself today. Yesterday was built upon enough glancing blows and exposed wounds and broken pride to last a lifetime, even if they had managed to mend most of it. 

“Enough lip and more shuffling feet,” Amy says, breezing through the open door without waiting for Theta to follow. 

Theta shoots Koschei one final glance — eyes still heavy with tiredness but half of a bemused smile spread across her lips — before she follows in Amy’s wake. 

Amy has already set up shop in the kitchen, erecting mirrors and taking over copious amounts of both the countertop and the table itself. Red fingernails rap against the wooden back of a chair as she waits for Theta to take it, and almost as soon as she does so, she begins picking at the knots in the nest of blonde hair. These kinds of days are always frantic — marked by the insatiable need to deliver perfection on strict deadlines — but there is a note of pure panic present that deviates from previous years. 

It stirs more and more worry as Theta is drawn further and further away from the stupor of sleep. 

After a couple minutes of unsteady silence and gentle tugs on blonde tangles, Theta dares to ask, “How late were we?”

“About an hour,” Amy says around the comb perched in her mouth. 

“Oh.” The syllable is quiet and her eyes scan the empty air in front of her, searching for the thoughts required to work her way through this dervish of a morning. “I thought it was worse, if I’m honest.” Despite her dreams and foolish wishes, they were not even close to buying themselves enough time to slip away from the grasp of the day and break the cycle of being repeatedly subjected to the echoes of their childhood trauma. 

“It’s not great.” The words are louder this time, free from the muffled screening of the comb, whose teeth now drag through locks of hair with wanton abandon. “I have four of you this time. _Four_. Two is enough, but four…” She pauses, taking a moment to pry apart a particularly stubborn knot. “And when two of the four don’t have enough self-control to drag themselves out of bed at the appointed hour…” 

Amy doesn’t have to finish the thought. 

“I didn’t mean —“ Theta should have attempted an apology, but instead, she is mounting a defense. Ever intuitive, Amy senses the difference and cuts her short with a sharp and pointed sigh. 

“Just don’t do it again.” There’s a pause before she adds a gentle “ _please_ ” to soften the blow. 

“Hopefully there won’t be an again.” 

Amy sighs through her nose. “There’s always an again. Whether it’s a crowning or a victory parade or a media appearance, there will always be an again with you two. Maybe not on interview day, but some time and some place, there will be an again.” The thought is shockingly resigned. Perhaps it is just the day working its way beneath Amy’s skin, or perhaps something else is eating at her. Something deeper and harder to quantify. For a moment, Theta dares to wonder if Amy, like Romana, is privy to Koschei’s plans. If so, then these next several days define her hopes and dreams for the future in a much more profound way than career goals and climbing the social ladder. 

“Do you want me to do something to help? I could maybe make things go faster? Make up for lost time” Theta offers, eyes scanning the mess. Truthfully, she knows her way around precious little of it. She rarely bothers to do more in the way of personal grooming than bathing, brushing her hair, and making sure that she is putting on a clean set of clothes, but maybe there is something easy that will lighten Amy’s load and ease her own restless need to do something productive. 

“For starters, you can sit still,” Amy says, turning Theta’s head back forwards with two firm hands. “And try to keep yourself off of Koschei long enough to get a decent night’s sleep next time.” There's a hint of a smile beneath the frustration.

“I didn’t —“ Theta starts, but Amy interrupts her again. 

“Of course you didn’t.” The tone shifts even further, and there’s aknowing wink reflected back at her in the mirror. 

Theta nervously swipes her tongue over her lips. She doesn’t want to explain the intricacies of what happened last night, to dig into the particulars of their argument, and the emotional wrench in the words that came in the form of a message from the desk of the President, but she also doesn’t want Amy to think that she forewent responsibility in the name of something as crude and primal as sleeping with Koschei. 

She wanted to, though. Her hunger burned as badly as his did when his hands traced over her body the previous evening, but they hadn’t. They only spoke and slept. The late hour was due to the bargained period of silent separation and nothing else. 

In the end, Theta says only, “We’ll do better.” 

So far as Amy is concerned, that seems to be enough to brighten the mood and get down to work with a smidge less aggression. 

It is a couple hours before Amy finishes wrestling Theta into hair and makeup and the appointed ensemble for the day and she is once again permitted to venture back into the bedroom. 

Theta is clothed entirely in a suit that speaks of darkness. It is cut in a relatively simple and unassuming silhouette — well-structured and impressive mostly in color and tailoring -- and the fabric shifts between speckled darkness and the cold light of the moon, marking a dozen phases and the slow passage of the month every time she turns. A deep blue waistcoat peeks out beneath the collar, inset with twinkling stars. Her hair is pulled up and away from her face with only the faint wisps of light-colored baby hairs tracing the contours of cheeks. Somewhere at the back of her head, a silver pin inlaid with a jewel that matches her engagement ring sits nestled amidst the blonde. 

She misses her stars and only stars, but she’ll accept the moon alongside them. It is far better than the death and storms in which Amy sometimes cloaks her. She does not look upon the night sky and think of death and the lives that she has stolen; she looks upon the night sky and sees comfort and hope and whispered promises. It makes her breathe a bit easier and turn her mind away from the fear of an uncertain future.

Koschei, too, is wrapped in sky. The cut of his suit matches hers, but his is draped from gleaming oranges and yellows, the blazing heat of a noonday sun. Light shimmers and dances as he moves, and his skin is coated in a glittering gold dust that makes him look alight with flame. He is fire and life-sustaining warmth and the glorious passage of the day. A slender crown sits perched upon his coiffed hair, not unlike the winners laurels that they have both worn in years past, and small, golden rays pierce the air above his head. 

He grins at her as she slips through the door — wide and bright and gleaming — and Theta returns it with a tight, tiny smile of her own. 

“Hi,” she says, the word shy and timid and lined with a flushing sense of shame. 

Her eyes linger on him — taking in the color and the brightness and the angles of his face — and she finds her mind circling back towards the inevitable. She first considered kissing him when they were dressed in the colors and symbols of the sky, and she considers it now — considers how easy it would be to give into him entirely and bask in that light, allow it to wash away the horrors that surround her and the pressures of their position. Fear, however, continues to hold her back. She is embarrassed that she is looking at him long enough to be objectionable, ashamed that other people would assume that they would be physically intimate at the expense of others, horrified that she very much wants to do both those things and that he _knows it_. 

Koschei extends a hand towards her and she takes it, and he pulls her closer with a smile and a breath of air that still stings with the icy chill of peppermint, in pointed contrast to the blazing warmth of his outfit. With a tug, he draws her closer, and she catches his eyes lingering, too. 

She pretends not to notice his gaze as she asks, “Can I have one?” 

“Can you have what, love?” Dark eyebrows raise and confusion coats his tongue. 

“A mint. You always have them. I can smell it.” Theta has never mentioned it before, but she has been aware of the scent for ages. She breaches his space often enough to know it's a habit, and she does not care whether or not it is a genuine preference or a part of his immaculately crafted persona. In this moment, she wants to share it with him, and she wants a distraction. It's another magic trick, redirecting their attention elsewhere to build the illusion that everything might be okay and the world will still be intact come first the interview and then the dreadful start of the Games themselves. 

A sound leaves Koschei lips — caught somewhere between a sniff and a laugh — and his free hand digs into an inside pocket of his suit jacket. After a second, his fingers emerge against with a single plastic-wrapped candy perched between his fingers. “Never thought you noticed,” he remarks. To anyone else, it would seem as though his is speaking as he would normally, without care for the stylists that still hover in a circle around them, smoothing hairs and tugging at seams in order to fix the lay of their clothes. However, Theta knows the difference. She can feel the mask between them, barring her from the truth of his emotions. 

It makes her feel alone, even while their hands touch and their eyes meet.

“I pay attention,” she sniffs, plucking the candy from him and pulling her hand from his as she words to untwist the wrapper. 

His gaze burns, and beneath the veneer of makeup on her face, she blushes. She wonders if he can see it, and desperately hopes that he can’t. He has always been able to see too many of the things that run through her mind and is always far too willing to comment on them. For all his many misses, there are uncountable hits. He has watched her for years. He has felt some of her pain. He knows her better and more intimately than anyone has ever dared to know her before. 

The mint hits her tongue with a snap. She feels it in her nose and in the back of her throat, and she almost coughs at the suddenness of it. When the initial shock passes, she takes his hand, tugs his fingers apart, and sets the trash in his palms without comment.

Koschei tilts his head and interest lilts his tongue as he says, “You do, indeed.” He picks the words carefully, hinting at thoughts without voicing them aloud.

It’s frustrating, and she bristles in response.

“What? Are you surprised?” she says, almost offended by the implication.

“No. Just curious.” 

“About what?” Fear in the face of the unknown whispers across her skin and digs into her belly. She likes having information, likes it when he lets her in, but when he walls off, it makes her nervous. It makes her feel lost again, instead of found. She needs to be found, needs to keep that trust in him, needs to rely on him to anchor her if she has any hope of making it through the day without falling into old habits and suffocating memories. 

He does not answer her, and she repeats the question, leaning in a bit harder. “About what, Koschei?” 

One of the girls swipes a hand sticky with a thick coat hairspray through Theta’s hair, and Theta almost jumps out of her skin as the chill of a metal ring bumps up against the sensitive skin of her ear.

Koschei smiles at the movement and turns his face away, looking out the window and at nothing at all. “About everything.”

“That’s not helpful.” 

“No, it’s not,” he agrees, but the amused tone of his voice does not shift, nor does he bother to clarify further. 

A frown digs a deep trench above her nose, and her stomach knots. “Are you going to be like that today? Of all days?” 

“Like what, Theta?” He turns back to her, eyebrows raised with interest, daring her to explain. 

She exhales through her nose in a great huff of frustration. She can’t tell him the truth, not when there’s people around them, can’t tell him that she needs him to be Koschei and not the Master.

“Like -- like _this_.” Her hand gestures vaguely in his direction, indicating everything from the top of his head to the shined toes of his shoes. So far as explanations go, it is on equal footing with his ‘about everything,’ and much less eloquent.

Koschei’s eyes dart in the direction of the assistants that buzz about them, indicating that they are not alone. “We’ll talk later.”

Theta rolls her eyes, but she does not argue. She’s frustrated and afraid, but she’s past arguing. Not forever, but for now. The previous day was too exhausting to sustain, and though today hangs just as heavy with the weight of her history, she does not want to repeat the experience. 

She is better than her old self, and besides, she does not have enough truths and admissions left to offer to him in the vain hope of atoning for her sins and her many, many missteps. 

Time passes slowly when they stop speaking, and it is only when Amy sticks her head back through the bedroom door and offers a pair of approving — if harried — thumbs ups — that the young assistants retreat and Theta and Koschei are free to breathe again. 

“Are you ready?” Koschei asks, stepping towards her shoulder and offering her his arm.  
  
Theta slips her hand through the gap and meets his gaze. Their peppermint-tinted breaths mingle in the air between them, dropping the temperature of the room. “No.”  
  
For a fleeting second, Koschei’s mask breaks, and Theta breathes a sigh of relief as her pain finds a kindred spirit in the back of his gaze.

“Neither am I,” he admits before the mask goes up again, and they step out the door towards whatever unpredictable doom the day might bring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last bit of soft (with an undercurrent of tension) before shit really hits the fan. Are you ready? I'm not ready.


	31. Chapter 31

The building rustles with life and movement.

People move in herds, filling up a space that’s too tight to house them all, but even amidst the crowd and the noise, the twenty-four tributes are easy to spot. They are too young to be here, their eyes jump nervously from point to point, and they stumble over heels and long hemlines.

Theta tries not to make eye contact with them.

She does not know them, does not know their names or their stories, and does not want to feel their fear. If she did, it would only intensify her own, and between the stress of supporting Sparrow and Rennette, the echoes of past trauma that sneak through the defenses designed to keep them at bay, and the pressure of her own looming interview, she has enough horrors with which to contend.

Despite her ardent refusal to meet anyone’s eyes, she can see heads turn as they walk past, can sense the whispers spoken behind raised hands as people notice, knows that she and Koschei are being seen. The tributes may not care that she and Koschei are here on display, but their peers do. The scrutiny is intensely uncomfortable, and she wishes that she had the foresight to slide a flask into a pocket to help her cope with the reality of the day. A few mouthfuls of whiskey would do her raw nerves a bit of good.

Her teeth drag across her bottom lip as she turns her eyes downward — focusing on Sparrow and Rennette’s feet in front of her as they follow the path that Romana forges through the crowd — and Koschei notices the expression. His hand entwines with hers, and his fingers lightly squeeze her own as he asks, “Are you okay?” The words are a mumble that barely rises above the noise of the assembled teams.

Theta lifts her eyes, taking a moment to fix them upon his face. As they walk, the dim, shifting, oddly colored lights that illuminate the space in reflect back at her from the glitter spread across his skin. It is a thoroughly ridiculous look in a sea of ridiculous looks, but she barely notices it. She only sees him.

Her voice is dry as she replies, “An obvious question with an obvious answer.”

Koschei _tsks_ his tongue against the back of his teeth. “Obvious questions are easy questions. Would you rather I asked a difficult one?”

“Maybe. I need something to think about. Anything to think about. Anything that’s not this.”

Theta’s sentences bump and jostle against each other as Koschei draws a bit closer to her, leaning sideways as he dodges an extravagant and enormous gown courtesy of District 11. There’s a hint of peppermint in her nose — a hint of warmth and chill and the flutter of her heart as their bodies touch for a brief moment before he steps away again, keeping her hand in his.

A smile flirts with his expression as he toys with the right question to ask. “When did you first hear about your little raccoon uprising?”

Surprise parts her lips and she almost freezes in shock, but the call of duty and the relentless buzz of fear keep her walking. “I thought you hated the raccoons.”

“ _Oh_ , I do, but you asked for a difficult question. What harder question is there than one without a real answer?” His voice dances, and he skips a step in pleased glee. Theta wonders if it is part of the mask, or if he’s genuinely proud of himself for daring to bring up the dreaded, insane topic towards which she has so often steered their conversations. Whatever fear plagues him today, he is coping with it far better than she is coping with hers.

Offense edges into Theta’s voice as she asks, “Who said there’s not a real answer?” She’s not entirely sure whether the emotion genuine or feigned, but something about his energy is infectious.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to disparage your very reliable source of small mammal news.” Koschei’s fingers tighten around hers, and his small smile turns into a grin.

“ _Stop_.” There’s a hint of laughter beneath the word. Theta drops her shoulder and leans into him, shoving him perilously close to the contingent from District 7. So close, in fact, that smartly dressed Martha Jones jumps out of the way and shoots them a glare so sharp that it could prove lethal. Koschei bothers to look contrite and offer a quick apology, but Theta cannot tear her mind and her eyes away from him long enough to manage to do the same. She asked for a distraction, but she did not expect it to be nearly this effective.

“Make me,” he dares.

Five more steps and a break in the crowd offers her the opportunity to shove him against the wall. Surprise dances across his face and his grin lingers, though it shifts into something positively feral as he tilts his head. Her right hand remains laced with his as she braces her opposite forearm against his collarbone, eyebrows raised as she challenges him to try to escape.

“Is this what you wanted, _love_?” She borrows both his word and his tone, practically purrs it against his lips as the scant space between them crackles with energy.

“Absolutely.”

Theta is acutely aware of both his racing heartbeat in her own. She feels his breath catch in his chest as her eyes consider his lips, and for a moment, she thinks that she’ll finally do it. This is far from a place of fantasies and carnal hunger, but it feels right. This is the place that forged them, the place that brought them together, the place where their shared pain was scribed upon countless film negatives.

A lilting accent and a pair of interfering hands interrupt them before she has a chance to follow through. “Oi! What have I told you two about wrinkles? No. We’re not doing this today. Snog in the middle of the room like normal people, won’t you?”

Amy. Of course it would be Amy. There is a certain irony in the fact that the first person who forced Theta to seriously consider the possibility of falling in love with Koschei dared to interrupt them at the very moment where she considered sealing the deal.

The fire dies. Theta flushes and takes a step backward, releasing her hold on Koschei and detangling their handhold. Koschei’s disappointment is practically tangible as the grin falls away and he shoves his hand into his pocket.

“No need to be a spoilsport, Miss Pond,” he comments, keeping a wary eye on Amy as she circles him like a shark, brushing imagined dust from his back and tugging at the fabric. Every couple of seconds, Theta catches his gaze flitting to her, as if he is terribly afraid that she might disappear.

“Mrs, thank you. I am married,” Amy corrects with a sniff as she turns her attention to Theta’s suit.

“The same thing, isn’t it?” Koschei drawls, making it absolutely clear that in this moment, he cares about nothing and no one but Theta and himself.

“No.” Amy’s words stand firm.

“I’m sorry,” Theta says on both of their behalf.

Amy glances up for a moment, brows raised. “That’s two apologies in one day, Theta. New territory for you, isn’t it? You never apologize for anything.”

“You could say thank you instead of trying to ruin it.”

Amy merely smiles, though the strain lying beneath it cuts through the expression and saddens her eyes. In the dim, scattered light, Theta can see the lines beginning to settle at the corners of the woman’s mouth. She sometimes forgets that Amy is no longer the brightly enthusiastic teenager that she first met. Time has past and people have grown up. This world has shaped them, hardened them, stolen years off their lives even while Caesar Flickerman remains artificially resistant to the passage of time.

Theta is dreadfully sorry that she and Koschei piled upon that wear and tear by daring to be late this morning.

“Come on,” Amy says once she is content that Theta and Koschei have not managed to do any real damage to the garments. “Everyone’s this way.”

Theta does not look at Koschei as they finish their walk. She does not reach out to take his hand again, but she is acutely aware of his presence at her side and the heat of his stare as it cuts through the many layers of their clothes.

When the trio reaches their designated space, the production assistant assigned to their group takes one nervous look at Theta and takes aback. Theta merely rolls her eyes. For all the worry and rage that should be consuming her right now, she can think only of the hunger that had lurked in Koschei’s eyes and the fleeting second when she resolved that she wanted to kiss him and was willing to do it. She could still do it, here and now, standing in the middle of the room and far away from any walls, but she is too conscious of the people watching them. She doesn’t want an audience. Or, at least, she wants to be able to forget about the audience. She can’t right now. Not here. Not with these particular people.

Her tongue wets her lips, and Koschei’s gaze cuts towards her — alert and razor sharp.

For a moment, she thinks that he might actually dare to kiss her himself, but he doesn’t.

Silence lingers — tense and crackling and dreadfully length — and it is only Rennette that breaks it, turning to Koschei to ask, “Can you go over what we need to say, again?” As always, her voice is delicate. She is too gentle to be here, and Theta’s heart dares to break a little bit further. She made a promise that she would do everything that she could to keep that little girl safe, but she doesn’t know if it will matter. She is powerful enough to protect Koschei from the prying eyes and violent intervention of the President, but she does not think she is powerful enough to bargain for Rennette’s survival against impossible odds.

She wonders if anyone is powerful enough for that.

Koschei sinks into an chair and runs a hand over his beard as he begins to list through the subjects that Caesar normally covers. He knows them all by heart. After fifteen years of training tributes mostly solo, he is a veritable lexicon of knowledge about the intricacies of both the Games and the culture that surrounds them.

Theta will never match it. She doesn’t have the stomach to watch highlights and sift through footage and spend time with the ghosts of people that she once knew. She can barely stand to reside in the present, nonetheless the past. Things have certainly improved, but she is far from healed. She doesn’t think she’ll ever be truly normal, but she also doesn’t think anyone expects her to be. Koschei looks at her pain and sees fire and warmth and life, and perhaps that is enough. She is not broken, just difficult and complicated and living is worth the effort.

Romana steps forward and hovers at Theta’s shoulder, gaze darting between Theta and Koschei and the tributes. “Do you think they’ll do it?” She doesn’t have to clarify the question. For however long the Games last this year, every question will revolve around the chances their tributes have of winning.

Theta shrugs. “I’m not the right person to ask.” It’s an honest answer. She doesn’t know enough about the field, doesn’t know enough about the history of the Games, doesn’t even know enough about the tributes themselves. Any answer she gives would be inherently flawed.

“Does _he_ think they’ll do it?” Romana corrects, nodding in Koschei’s direction.

Theta turns the question over in her mind, lifting her chin slightly as she regards Koschei, eyes sweeping across the curves of his body as he leans forward to talk to the two tributes. “I think he has hope.”

“I don’t know what that means, Theta.”

Fondness flickers in Theta’s eyes and tugs at the corners of her lips as she tears her gaze away from his body. “It means everything, doesn’t it? Hard to create hope in a place like this. Harder to keep it.”

“Almost as hard as love,” Romana comments dryly.

Koschei glances at Theta, and their eyes lock.

Something flutters in Theta’s heart, and she confirms, “Almost.”

It is both the saddest and the happiest word that she has ever spoken.

Time stretches into an eternity.

Theta does not wish for it to speed up. Speeding up would mean losing the tributes faster. Speeding up would mean being thrown into violence and uncertainty. Speeding up would leave her lost and spinning and gasping for air. However, waiting is painful and agonizing in the worst ways. She feels powerless. She worries for the tributes, she worries for herself, and she tastes ash on her tongue when she tries to swallow back her emotions.

In the meantime, Koschei fidgets. For a while, he hovers beside the two tributes, offering insight in scattered pieces as it occurs to him. After that, he spends a few minutes hovering at Theta’s shoulder, eyes darting around the room while he says nothing at all. Later, there is a particularly long period when he disappears only to reappear with two full wine glasses in hand. He passes one to Theta, and keeps the other.

Theta doesn’t care for wine, but she drinks it anyway. She needs the comfort and the buzz and the courage.

Eventually, the crew in charge begins to separate the tributes from their respective groups, herding them into an organized line in the center of the room. Theta murmurs encouragement and pats Sparrow and Rennette awkwardly on the backs as they walk away.

Koschei takes advantage of the chaos of movement to disappear for a second time. When he returns, he bears the news that their interview is last, after the all the tributes take their turns and they organize them all on the bleachers and scaffolding on stage for the final group shot, as is tradition. Theta nods, and drowns her thoughts in the rest of her wine. She assumed as much. Though she is far from a regular in the press circuits, she remembers how they work, how they’re structured, understand the tides and currents that dictate their pace.

As he relieves her of her empty glass and uses a hand to brush Theta’s hair back over her shoulder, Koschei asks if she’s okay for the second time.

Her eyes meet his — mournful and tired and restless. “No.”

Movement rustles over his shoulder, and her gaze shifts to follow it. As she begins to understand what’s going on, panic overwhelms her, and she pushes Koschei aside and races across the room.

One of the Careers — a boy from District 2, trained and conditioned for the Games for his whole life and both far older and far bigger than both of the District 3 tributes — elbows Rennette in the face. He plays it off as an accident, but Theta saw him gauge the distance, take a step backward, line up the shot so that it would land. Rennette merely flinches, putting her hand to her nose to make sure that it isn’t bleeding. She makes no move to return the favor and deepen the conflict, but Sparrow raises an arm, ready to strike back.

Theta reaches him in time to wrap her fingers around his wrist and stop the blow before it has a chance to land.

“Don’t you dare,” she hisses, dragging the boy backwards.

Sparrow grinds his feet into the ground, trying to resist Theta’s intervention. “What do you care?”

The words are quick and careless — spoken in anger and without regards to their truth — but they hurt. Theta knows she was distant from him, knows that she did little to support them, knows that he has little reason to trust her.

Her grip on his arm remains tight, knuckles growing white as her face hardens. “Be smarter than this. You want enemies? This is how you get enemies.”

“Everyone’s my enemy,” Sparrow retorts, ripping his arm from her grasp and gesturing at all the children around them — trained and untrained alike. “They all want to kill me, Theta. What does it matter?” His voice breaks, and for the first time, she lets herself feel for him. She kept a wall between them on purpose, to minimize the glimpses of the person that she had been back when she was cast in the Arena, back when she made the choice to take the lives from eighteen other people so that she might have a chance to live.

Tears gather in the corners of Theta’s eyes, and she raises a hand to stop them before they have a chance to fall. “Let them be your enemies tomorrow. Today is the last day some of them have. Be kind. Don’t let other people drag you into their cowardice. It’s not worth it. It’s never worth it.”

Over Sparrow’s shoulder, the Career who hit Rennette snickers. Theta glares at him in return.

Sparrow says nothing. He remains still, fists held tight to his sides, anger seeping from every pore in his body.

“Please, Sparrow. Not today,” Theta pleads.

A steady stream of breath trickles against Theta’s ear as a warm hand settles on her waist, ready to provide support should she need it. She knows who it belongs to; she doesn’t have to turn around and look.

Sparrow’s gaze flits from Theta’s face to Koschei’s. He still does not respond, but the fingers of his closed fist loosen their grip slightly.

“Not today, okay?” Theta asks, desperately seeking confirmation that he won’t engage with the other tributes any further.

A heavy sigh spills from Sparrow’s lips and settles across his shoulders.

“Okay.” He says after an age, uncurling his fingers and wiping his palms against the fabric of his trousers.

The hand at Theta’s waist gently starts to guide her away and a quiet voice in her ear says, “Let him go. He won’t do anything.”

For a moment, she is tempted to argue, but even though Theta does not trust Sparrow, she does trust Koschei. Beneath the stares of all of those collected in this space, she allows him to steer her away and draw her back towards where Romana and Amy still stand. Both woman are visibly concerned, but neither of them dared to intervene, probably both to protect their occupations and reputations and because they are not prepared to engage in a physical fight. The Games are as much a part of their lives as it is a part of Theta’s and Koschei’s, but they’ve never fought in them. They don’t know the skills it takes to exist on the other side of the divide.

Theta casts a single glance back over her shoulder as they walk — not at Sparrow, but at Rennette — and Rennette nods to indicate that she’s all right. She has, however, retreated to a safe distance from both Sparrow and the Career who hit her. Theta does not think that the move is entirely necessary — no doubt anyone with poor intentions has shifted their focus towards Sparrow’s emotional outburst and picked him out as the more satisfying target — but she is relieved that the girl did not lose her head during the madness.

Perhaps one of them will survive this.

Perhaps it will all be okay.

Perhaps the Capitol will finally fall.

When the interviews finally start, Theta barely listens. No one ever says anything worth saying. To her, it’s all meaningless drivel. Subjects circle between what it is like to experience the luxury of the Capitol, the family and friends back home that the tributes hope to see again when the Games are over, frivolous childhood crushes, and the impressive clothes that they wear. Even when Sparrow and Rennette take the stage in their turns, she only listens for a specific set of keywords, alert for any misstep that would prove that Sparrow did not listen to her when she told him to be kind and not make enemies.

At her side, Koschei senses her tension and takes her hand in his again, rubbing his thumb in gentle circles across her skin. The gesture is as much for him as it is for her. She knows how prone he is to fidgeting when he is denied control of his surroundings, and she does not pull away. She lets him fidget with her as much as he pleases. Focusing on his touch helps keep her from losing herself in her worry.

When the pair of tributes return to wait out the interviews for rest of the field, Koschei offers them a “Well done.”

Theta merely nods. She doesn’t trust herself to speak without referencing the altercation, and she does not want to risk drudging up Sparrow’s anger and reaping whatever consequences might follow. Knowing her own habits, it is far better to let the subject die and the memory fade.

As time wears on and their own interview draws closer, Theta gets more and more nervous. Before their first appearance, she and Koschei discussed talking points. Their conversations were neither effective nor efficient, but they at least _existed_. They did not bother to do the same for this appearance. The argument had gotten in the way, and thoughts of the future had been flung to the wayside.

Koschei echoes her nerves and draws her in tighter. His hand moves from her hand to her arm, running across the lines of the scars that sit beneath her sleeve with a degree of accuracy that suggest that he has memorized their branching paths.

An age passes, District after District takes the stage, and eventually, the tributes are herded back into a line. As they move, Theta spots the tributes from District 2 whispering and casting glances at Sparrow.

Theta is tempted to step in, tempted to tell them off from whatever it is that they might be doing, but there is no point. If they are plotting his death, they will do so regardless of whether or not they are allowed to do so here. They have an entire evening spent alone in their apartment with which to scheme.

In the hope of keeping her mind from wandering towards those eventualities, she pivots on one foot, pressing herself against Koschei and resting her head on his shoulder. His hand finds the back of her head, careful not to disturb the curls or the pin that Amy placed there. Theta doesn’t bother to think about how repulsive the idea of turning to Koschei for comfort and distraction would have been mere weeks ago. She doesn’t bother thinking at all, because thinking would make her second guess, thinking would mean remembering that people are watching her, thinking would mean coming to the realization that she needs Koschei as badly as he needs her.

The anthem plays on the unseen stage, filtering through both the wall and the speakers on the many monitors that line the room and the halls beyond.

Somewhere over Koschei’s shoulder, heard but unseen, the crew begins to herd the tributes back onto the stage and guiding them onto the raised bleachers that line the back for the stage. Districts 1-6 get the top row, and Districts 7-12 get the bottom row. It is the way things have always been since the Games first began. If Theta looked up, she would be able to glimpse the back of the bleachers through the open production doors.

If she looked up, she might have been able to see the moment when Sparrow is _pushed_.

But she doesn’t look up. Her world is sound and music and the swell of Koschei’s breaths against her body.

A gasp runs through the room.

The anthem stops.

The monitors go dark.

Romana’s voice snags on a pained and desperately quiet, “No.”

Theta and Koschei part in confusion, taking a step back from each other and turning to look and see what all the fuss is about. Theta doesn’t assume the worst. She has no reason to. She assumes technical difficulties, but that assumption is pushed aside as Amy shoves herself into the space between them.

Amy is panicked. More panicked than she was that morning. More panicked than Theta has ever seen her be. Manicured fingernails dig into the layers of fabric as her hands grip Theta and Koschei’s shoulders, shoving them down the walkway by which they had entered the building.

Theta catches a glimpse of Romana as she races towards the still-open doorway and disappears through it as quickly as a ghost. From somewhere beyond, she hears a scream.

“What happened?“ Theta dares to ask.

She moves to follow, but Amy holds her tight.

An announcement floats from the unseen speakers, not voiced by Caesar. That detail alone is far more unsettling than Romana’s pain or the ruined Anthem or the sudden darkness of the broadcast. Caesar is always present, always desperate to lift the mood, and slather horrible truths in glittering lies.

“There has been an incident. Please remain calm while we investigate the situation.”

Theta’s mind races as she begins to put the pieces together. An incident, the pointing, the suddenness with which everything ended.

It has been a long time since someone sabotaged a competitor before the Games, but it is not entirely unheard of.

It takes her a moment to dare to voice the thought aloud.

“They didn’t…” she starts, but Amy cuts her off, voice rough and eyes full of tears.

“Get out. Just get out. Please.”

Amy turns to Koschei, copper hair flying in a way that looks almost like a sheet of raining blood in the dim, artificial, filtered light that makes the space. “Get her out, please. Don’t let her see.”

Panic rises. Theta’s mind fills with thoughts of the worst — of Sparrow's bruised and broken body sitting below the risers, bathed in sinfully colored light while other people look down upon it and _laugh_. “No.” She barely manages to speak the word. It tugs and breaks and tears.

“ _No!_ ”

Theta breaks Amy’s grip and tries to race towards the door, but Koschei’s arms wrap around her, strong enough to bring her to a halt.

“No. I have to…have to…”

The thought stops. She doesn’t know what she has to do. She can’t fix it, but she wants to _see_ it. She wants to know that it is really final, wants to apologize and say goodbye and try to make things right with the tribute that she refused to help until help no longer countered.

Koschei draws her in, holding her tightly against his chest. This time, the embrace is not comforting. It is suffocating.

She wriggles free and lashes out with her tongue and her wrath and her grief. “Don’t touch me.”

Behind him, the door closes and a lock clicks, cutting everyone off from the tributes and whatever gruesome scene lies among them.

Koschei lets her run towards it, lets her beat against it and beg for someone to open it, watches her break down and cry on the floor when she realizes that no one is going to let her in. She expects him to follow — expects him to fight and care and try to do _something_ — but he doesn’t. He simply allows her live and breathe and struggle for a few minutes before he comes closer and puts a hand on her back.

“Amy’s right. We should go.”

She rustles beneath his touch, but she doesn’t break it. “I don’t want to go. I need to be here. Need to see him. Need to…” _Apologize_. She needs to apologize. She tried to help and she failed him. And she’s horribly, desperately sorry for it.

Koschei’s voice is dangerously quiet as he crouches next to her. “It’s not about want, Theta.”

“Don’t you care?” she spits back. “Don’t you want to fight for them? Aren’t you angry?”

It’s a series of pointless questions. As soon as she lifts her gaze and meets his eyes, she sees the rage and guilt and worry on his face, unencumbered by the persona that he normally dons while in public view.

He is just as hurt as she is, but he's holding it at bay, putting her needs before his.

The realization stops her tears, stops the accusations, but it doesn’t make her any less angry. Rather, it focuses her anger. It stills the tide that swept her away a moment ago and gives her the opportunity to dig her feet into the sand and keep her head above water. She no longer itches to push Koschei away. For a moment, she knows what it’s like to _be_ Koschei, to know what she wants and have a plan with which she might be able to execute it. Koschei copes with his anger by staging coups and sparring with her and doing magic tricks, and for the first time, she sees how those might be able to help.

The last time she was angry, every second of his staged distraction felt like a twisting knife. She was disorganized and unfocused and she let her anger shift to him even though he neither sparked nor deserved it. However, for the first time, she actually knows what she’s mad at, and thanks to him, she thinks she knows what will help.

If she can’t apologize, she wants to channel this energy somewhere, wants to rage and break in private, wants to throw her dagger behind a knife until she doesn’t feel anything anymore.

It still takes a few heaving, panting breaths before she can organize the thought enough to speak it coherently. “I want to fight again.”

His face flickers with an unreadable thought. “Not a good idea.”

Theta digs in harder. She wants this as much as she has ever wanted anything. In this moment, it is the only thing that promises her relief, and she clings to the thought and doesn’t let go. “Not them. Not him. I want to fight you. You said it would help last time. I want to try again.”

Hesitation coats Koschei’s tongue as he observes, “It didn’t help last time.” But there is a hint of interest there, too, present in the press of his palm on her back and the whisper of bated breath that follows the word

Theta doesn’t blame him for arguing. He doesn’t want to make this worse for either of them. Last time, she had hurt him. She knows that nothing she says will convince him that she won’t do it again, however, she doubles down, shaking with pain and rage an anger and curled in a puddle on the floor. “My weapon. My terms. I want this to go away. I don't want to feel this anymore. I can't feel this anymore. Help me not feel it anymore. _Please_.”

“Theta.”

Her name on his lips is delicate and gentle and caring.

“Koschei.”

His name on her lips burns with insistence and need and the fury of a heart broken too many times. It is a promise and a vow and a pleading expression of need.

Koschei straightens beneath the weight of it and extends a hand towards her as his mask settles back into place. “Promise me you know what you're doing.”

"I promise."  
  
For better or for worse, he decides to trust her. 


	32. Chapter 32

Their footsteps echo in the empty space. 

Theta is acutely aware of her own heartbeat. She hears it in her ears, feels it pulse in her neck, sees it move in her eyes. The world has been reduced to beating drums and a bleary haze of pain and anger and a single, solitary source of light that keeps her anchored in the present and offers her a tiny chance at real, tangible, meaningful _hope_. 

Koschei shrugs off his suit jacket, tossing it onto a chair with a cavalier disregard that would have made Amy flinch. Earlier in the day, Theta failed to notice the undershirt that sits beneath his sun-touched waistcoat. The shirt does not shine in the same way as the rest of the outfit. Rather, it is the same flat blue as unpolluted sky — marked by swirling white clouds that look so delicate that they almost seem real. For a moment, she dares to wonder why Koschei gets to be touched by daylight when beneath that mask of his, he is just as dark as she is, but she does not allow the thought to venture too far. Her emotions are running too high, and her heartbeat is far too loud. 

She cannot allow herself think. In her current state, thinking is dangerous. 

She can only act.

She is impulse and fire and pure, unbridled pain.

“Well, come on, then,” Koschei says, inclining his head as he suggests that Theta also shed her outer later. He has a point. It is difficult to fight while encumbered, and their clothes were designed for sitting in chairs and babbling about lies, not the intimacy and intensity of unchoreographed aggression. 

Thetaslides off her jacket and tosses it on top of his, exposing a waistcoat dotted with glittering stars. The cold of the room whispers across her exposed skin, cutting through the heat of her anger. She shivers. That morning, Amy offered her an undershirt, but she did not wear it. It seemed silly to wear an extra invisible and stifling layer while contending with the intense heat of the stage lights, but that is no longer a concern. 

The interview and its stressors have disappeared — chased away by the suddenness of the Games’ first death. 

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. 

She wasn’t ready for it. 

_They_ weren’t ready for it, Theta reminds herself. The world is not just hers, and an event like this sends ripples through every person it touches. 

She swallows the memory, refusing to allow it to take up residence. She doesn’t have time to grieve, and thanks to her missteps the previous day, she intensely fears the consequences of the wrath that tends to stir in its wake. She cannot allow herself to be consumed by her rage again. She has to enact control. She has to find an outlet and control the burn in the way that Koschei does. 

The way that Koschei is doing now, she realizes. 

“Are we really going to do this?” Koschei asks. She notices his eyes sweeping first across the scars on her arm, then the exposed hollow of her collarbone, and finally the single place at the base of her neck where the angry white-hot branches finally end. 

From a distance, he looks calm. His feet are planted at shoulder width and hands are clasped behind his back in the picture of patience. Theta knows that this steadiness isn’t truth. It is a performance designed for both of them. He doesn’t want to hurt her, and he wishes to hide his own hurt. 

However, Theta can sense the cracks in his mask. She is attuned to them now, knows them as intimately as she knows her own failings. She notes the nervous darting of his eyes, the quickness of his breaths, the tremble that traces up his arms until reaches his shoulders. She doesn’t think that he knows that she likes him better when he isn’t fronting — prefers the flaws of his humanity to the polished and immaculate veneer of his persona — but then again, she has never bothered to mention it. 

There are a lot of things Theta has never bothered to mention. Koschei has noticed some of these things on his own, but there are other things that seem to have been overlooked entirely. Perhaps one day —when the world is calm and her thoughts are organized and she does not fear the sharpness of her own tongue — she will share some of them. 

Theta strides forward and plucks a single training dagger from the cart. She runs a finger over the dull metal of the edge and feels its weight in her hands. Yesterday, Koschei shied away from daggers — afraid of the inherent intimacy that close combat carries — but subsequently, he threw her out of her depth and stoked her anger and made her more and more uncomfortable until she broke. That won’t happen today. This time, the fight will function as intended. She will throw her anger into the battle until it disappears. Surely, this time, fighting will keep her rage from consuming her. She is _depending_ on it. 

She tosses the dagger at Koschei. His hands fumble, and he barely manages to catch it. 

She picks up another to claim as her own, tests that edge, too, and then stands perfectly still, eyeing Koschei warily, waiting for him to make the first move. 

He doesn’t. 

He merely lifts his chin and says, “This is what you wanted. Do it.” 

Still, she waits. 

“Come on, Theta.” The sentence is shockingly insistent, torn between want and need.   
  
Theta’s shoes remain firmly stuck to the floor. She blinks once, almost as if she doesn’t quite understand the command. She is taking his measure, testing his metal. The best way to win a fight is to thoroughly know one’s opponent. In the Games, her opponent was not the other Tributes. It was the Arena itself, and she dismantled and repurposed its parts until it became a weapon. 

This is different. Her opponent is not an enemy, but a partner. She doesn’t quite know how to navigate that.   
  
“Come on, Theta!” Koschei roars, throwing his arms wide and challenging her forward. 

This time, Theta takes the bait. 

She throws herself at him — a single shooting star arcing through the grey and clinical air of the room. 

Her knife seeks out first his neck and then his side, aiming lower and higher in turn with a speed that Koschei can match only because he anticipates her moves. He watches the path of her eyes, tracks her intentions, follows through on their motion until his blade scrapes against hers and stops it short. 

They draw apart and move closer together as they exchange blows, shifting from offense to defense in turn. His every move is regimented, but she ripples and crashes and breaks like waves hitting the shore. Every strike channels her anger, taking it from her body and throwing it into the air where it fizzles and dies, leaving her with only the familiar creeping, numb void that always precedes an onslaught of grief. 

She swallows back tears and shoves down her emotions and focuses on his every move, determined to match it. 

The insufferable noise of her heartbeat fades into the rhythm of the exchange as they grapple in a glorious rush of glittering stars and molton sunlight. 

One step forward. One step backward. One strike, one riposte, a quick flurry, repeat. 

And, eventually, she starts to forget.

She forgets about Sparrow. She forgets about Rennette. She forgets about the scorched earth between herself and Koschei. She forgets about the lives that she has taken and the price that etched itself into the skin of her arm. She forgets her grief and her anger and everything except for this dance and the man who engages in it with her. 

Forgetting makes Theta a bit too bold and brings her a bit too close and gives Koschei a wide enough opening that he snatches her wrist in his free hand. The metal tip of his blade comes to rest on her throat. He pants with the effort of the fight. Sweat gleams on his brow, and his hand shakes, tracing a twisting mess of tiny lines on her skin. 

Theta’s head tilts. Then, a single beat of laughter spills from her lungs, and her captured fingers drop the knife into her opposite hand, which in turn, presses the blade against his throat. 

They linger in the draw, caught in each other’s gravity, struggling to breathe. 

But when she stops moving, Theta starts to remember again. Endorphins fade. Oxygen levels rise. Anger creeps in, slinking back towards the front of her mind and turning her focus back towards the drumming of her heart until the noise threatens to drive her to madness.

“Again.” The word floats from her lips on a single breath — desperate, hopeful.

Hesitation lurks on the surface of Koschei’s gaze, but Theta can see the excitement that races beneath. 

He takes a step backward. With a flick of his wrist, he spins his dagger, ready to weather her attacks for a second time. 

_Show-off_.

Theta’s tongue flicks over her lips as she gathers herself, builds a strategy, and springs forward. 

This bout is longer and more ferocious. She stays on the front foot the entire time, barely offering him an opportunity to strike back at her. Every blow pushes him closer and closer to the wall, and she begins to see it as a goal. After two dozen strikes, his back finally meets it, and she pauses. She did not consider what she would do once she had him cornered, she only knew that she _wanted_ it.

But wanting isn’t enough. It isn’t permanent. You have to know what to do with the thing once you have it. You have to seal the deal.

The memory of the afternoon washes over her — the hunger, the feeling of Koschei’s breaths swelling beneath her arm as she held him captive and purred a challenge, the moment when she honestly thought that she might finally give into instinct and kiss him. 

Koschei takes full advantage of her momentary doubt. 

His leg wraps around hers and he pivots, pinning her against the wall in his place. His hips press into hers and hold her firm as his open hand finds her dagger and pries it free. Almost lazily, he tosses it over his shoulder, and it clatters to the ground somewhere behind him. 

His own dagger presses into Theta’s neck and his free hand curls into a fist at her shoulder, bunching the fabric of her waistcoat and keeping her pinned.

The fight seems over, but a small box set into the wall presses into Theta’s back, offering a chance at redemption. An plan starts to form as she sneaks a hand behind her. Her fingers feel out the safety glass, estimating the pressure required to shatter it.

Victory shines in Koschei’s eyes, but a second later, it gives way beneath the unexpected flash of Theta’s own smile.

“ _Gotcha_.”  


Confusion washes over Koschei’s face, and Theta leans backwards, pressing all of her weight against her closed fist and the glass that lies behind it. It shatters, and her fingers blindly grope for the lever that she knows must be there somewhere. Finally, she finds it. She wraps her hand around it and pulls. Hard.

Sprinklers spring to life, lights flash red, and a siren blares. 

Taking advantage of the newly slick floor, she sweeps his legs out from beneath him. She hurls her entire weight at him, throwing them both to the floor with a blow so powerful that it knocks the blade from his hands and the breath from his lungs. Her fingers wrap around his wrists, pinning them to the ground beside his head as the satisfied thrill of victory threatens to sweep her away in its thrall. She hasn’t felt this powerful in a long time. 

She hasn’t felt this whole in a long time, even though she should be breaking. 

If she bothered to think at all, she _would_ be breaking. 

For several long minutes, they merely breathe and stare at each other, neither party quite comprehending how they ended up in this position — pressed together beneath artificial rain and flashing lights.

Koschei’s breath returns slowly. When he finally regains enough of it to speak, he grumbles, “Not fair.”

“My weapon, my game, my rules,” Theta replies. They are the same terms by which she started this game and the same terms by which she ended it. 

The alarm roars and the rain falls and she is soaked to the bone, but looking down at him, she feels unexpectedly warm. The heat does not stem from her anger — that fell away with every stroke of the blade — rather, it is something else entirely. It’s that slippery feeling that she has never been able to identify. 

Theta adjusts her position slightly. Her knees find the floor and her fingers tighten around his wrists. Every panting breath he takes against the inside of her legs, and unconsciously, her own lungs shift to mirror his. 

“Someone’s going to kill you, love,” Koschei eyes fix upon hers, bright and burning despite the obvious pain and exhaustion in his expression. 

A couple weeks ago, Theta might have said something along the lines of ‘ _it’s about time_ ’ and leaned into the inevitability of death, but instead, she hardens the hearts and digs into her budding determination. 

“No. They won’t.”

A glimmer of pride flirts with the corners of Koschei’s lips.

Mint and impulse and fire wash over Theta as she leans forward — newly soaked blonde hair slipping to cover their faces like a veil between them and the rest of the world — and presses her lips to his. 

The kiss starts out hesitant, but grows increasingly bold. He tastes like mint and ginger and the slightly metallic tang of the sprinkler water. She can feel his body arch beneath her touch, the press of his arms against her hands, the heat that burns between them. For a single, shining moment, kissing him is the only thing in the entire universe that really, truly matters. 

But kissing opens the floodgates.

Emotions tumble back into the dull void that had been hollowed out by every stroke of her dagger. 

She is in pain and grieving and angry and in love all that the same time, and she starts to cry, tears blurring with the sheets of water that never seem to stop falling. 

Koschei shifts beneath her. 

Theta’s fingers release their vice grip on his arms and he draws himself up, keeping her in his lap and curling his body around hers. She cannot hear him cry, but she can feel his sobs shaking against her. For the first time, she is not alone in her grief and her pain and her loss. For the first time, she has someone to share it with. Though she feels as though the thought should make her stop crying, it only makes everything worse, and she is intensely grateful for the noise and the sprinklers that help to hide the depths of her sorrow.  
  
They remain like that for minutes — time marked only by lost tears and siren cycles — before Theta presses her forehead against Koschei’s and squeezes her eyes shut.

“I want to help you kill the President,” she says to Koschei and Koschei alone.

No one overhears the words. 

Not the security cameras. 

Not the personnel that rushes through the doors in search of a fire to put out. 

The sirens drown it out for everyone except the person who _needs_ to hear it. 

Koschei leans back slightly, gazing up at her in something that almost resembles wonder. Though he is still crying, a grin settles across his face — as bright and ardent as any that he has ever offered her. It is an inherently absurd juxtaposition, but Theta thinks it suits him just fine.  


After all, they are both difficult people, and she is in love with every inch of his complications.  



	33. Chapter 33

Water trails in Theta and Koschei's wake as they return to the apartments.

None of the emergency personnel at the training facility bothered to offer them a towel or a change of clothes — only angry glares and grumbles of discontent. Theta does not doubt that she and Koschei will eventually find themselves billed for the damage to the building, but that’s fine. After all, she has more money than she could possibly spend, and she is not permitted to do anything worthwhile with it. She can’t even divide it amongst the people in her District. She tried to do that once, many years ago, but as soon as the Capitol caught wind of her spending, they punished everyone who dared to accept a handout. The culture of Panem is built almost entirely on scarcity — scarcity of food, scarcity of resources, scarcity of _peace_ — and anything that dares to mitigate that is sharply kicked. The government has a distinct interest in keeping everything under control, and the distribution of money is a threat to their stranglehold. 

Every few steps, the back of Koschei’s hand brushes against hers, but he does not speak to her, take her hand in his, or touch her properly. Theta is distinctly aware of how fragile the air between them feels, and perhaps Koschei also senses that fragility. Or perhaps he had simply been telling the truth when they sparred yesterday. Perhaps he is truly, deeply afraid of _her_. 

If that is true, Theta does not blame him. It is a well-founded fear. She has a history of behaving unpredictably. No doubt he is wondering if she will renounce her love the moment he accidentally pushes her too far, and he is right to fear that. She is easily intimidated by her own flaws and the world is an uncertain place, and though she is falling into him at the moment, there is no telling what attacks might be mounted against them in the coming days, weeks, and years. In mere hours, they will be forced to stand helplessly aside and look on as their single remaining tribute enters the Arena. Even without considering the love and interpersonal conflict that have been thrown into the mix, that will be a struggle in its own right. It seems unreasonable to assume that whatever delicate balance runs between them will emerge unscathed, and yet, against all odds, she finds herself hoping for the best.

The pair is silent as they step into the elevator. When they finally reach the comfort of their apartment, their clothes are still dripping, channeling a steady stream of water onto the polished floors. It pools in puddles around their feet, and Theta half expects Romana to emerge from the woodwork and chastise them for their thoughtless disregard. However, the rooms are dark and the air is silent. It feels as if the apartment itself is grieving. 

Together, Theta and Koschei walk down the hallway and into the bedroom.

Almost immediately upon entering, Koschei ducks into the adjacent bathroom and emerges a second later, tossing a dry towel in Theta’s direction before taking one for himself. 

“Thanks,” she says quietly. 

Her clothes cling to her like a sodden second skin — damp and cold and horrible — and she does not bother to consider the fact that Koschei is in the room with her before retreating to a corner and beginning to peel them off, layer by layer. Behind her, Koschei coughs politely, and she flushes red. 

“Sorry. I, uh, I forgot,” Theta stumbles over the words before disappearing into the dark of the closet, closing the door and cutting him off.

Logically, there should be a light switch in a closet this large, but Theta can’t seem to find it. Instead, she fumbles around in the dark, blindly grabbing a sweater and a comfortable pair of pants that may or may not belong to her. 

When she is ready to emerge, she knocks on the inside of the door, warning Koschei of her incoming presence in case he, too, is changing. 

Koschei does not answer. Theta cracks the door open, looking about to make sure that she is alone before disappearing into the bathroom and depositing her soaked clothes on the edge of the tub. She is not looking forward to seeing Amy’s face when she finds out that they ruined her expertly designed finery before it had a chance to make its debut.

Arms newly freed of their load, Theta steps in front of the mirror. With a frown, she looks down at the sweater that she grabbed in the dark. It isn’t hers. It’s Koschei’s. 

In accordance to some instinct that she did not even know she had, she raises her arm to her nose and breathes deeply, just to see if it smells like him — like mint and ginger and aftershave — but it doesn’t. It just smells clean, and she isn’t quite sure whether or not she’s disappointed. 

With a sigh, she raises her arms behind her head and begins to work at the pins in her hair. There are only a couple, thankfully, and she untangles them with little effort and tosses them onto the counter alongside the jewel-studded comb that had been the centerpiece. 

When she finally looks up at the mirror again, a second reflection has joined hers. Alarm flares, her heart leaps into her throat, and she jumps, spinning around to face its source. As her eyes register the invader as Koschei, her shock gives way to light annoyance, and she raises a hand to shove him backwards, fragility almost entirely forgotten. “You scared me.” 

“I didn’t mean to,” Koschei replies dryly. His eyes skate over the borrowed sweater and his lips quirk ever so slightly upward. “Are you just going to steal my clothes now instead of wearing your own?” 

Theta bristles, immediately rising to her own defense. “It was dark in there.” 

“There’s a light.” 

“I couldn’t find it.” Too quickly, she feels herself falling back into old patterns. It is easy to fight, alluring to be combative, fun to bait him into playing with her even at the risk of shattering the delicate bond between them. Being open and vulnerable takes concentrated effort, and she is not always capable of summoning enough of it. Not always capable of _being_ enough. 

A sigh trickles from Koschei nose. Theta does not doubt that if he had a drink in his hand, he would have downed it in a single gulp. “We should talk.” 

Theta’s fingers curl around the edge of the counter as she braces herself against it. “Is now the time?” she asks. Despite her better sense and her prickly streak, she cannot seem to keep her eyes from straying to his lips, thinking of how right it felt when she was kissing him — the bliss of being allowed to forget about everything else for a brief and fleeting moment, the joy of falling off the cliff and losing herself entirely in another person. 

“No time is ever the time.” Koschei’s eyes, too, are wandering, and she watches his hand as he brushes her wet hair out of her face. His touch lingers, and she can see the ghost of an impulse on his lips, but he does not act on it. “But I am not stupid enough to think that things will go smoothly from here on out simply because you kissed me.” 

His touch falls away as he takes a step backward, fingers finding his beard and gaze dropping to the tiled floor. 

Theta’s teeth sink into her bottom lip as she pulls herself up onto the surface of the counter. It gives her an extra inch or so in height, making up the slight difference between them. She likes being on even ground with him much better than the days that she spent at a stubborn and seemingly endless disadvantage. Her head tilts as she waits for whatever it is that he wants to say. 

Silence stretches towards weariness, minutes ticking away beneath the profundity of thought and the pressure of racing hearts. 

Koschei takes a step towards her again, bracing his hands against the counter on either side of her. His forward lean tilts the balance in Theta’s favor and grants her the high ground, and he stares up at her with something that almost seems like desperation. Tears gather at the corners of his eyes, and Theta’s gaze lingers upon them, intently interested in his honesty. 

“I want you, Theta,” Koschei says after a long pause. “I want all of you. I want your heart, I want your mind, I want…” He trails off, unwilling to lend his voice to the more vulgar ideas that might follow. “For a long time, I’ve wanted you, and for the vast majority of it, you looked back at me like you wanted nothing more than to destroy me. I want —“ 

He pauses and swallows before continuing. “I want some assurance that this isn’t some whim that will be forgotten in the morning, a side-effect of grieving that will pass with time. Don’t get me wrong, I desperately want to believe you. I desperately want to believe _us_ , but I cannot trust in you blindly. Not with everything on the line.”

Theta’s tongue wets her lips as worry sinks its fearsome claws into her heart. If kissing him was not enough, if pledging her loyalty to his cause was not enough, then she doesn’t know what is. She could raise her voice and ask him what he needs. She could weave promises that this isn’t something temporary and tell him that she thinks she does, indeed, love him. She could tell him what he wants to hear regardless of whether or not it is actually true. However, if she digs a little deeper and looks into her heart, she is forced to confront that fact that she doesn’t know _who_ she is anymore or what she might do in the coming days. The mercurial, sulking person who existed for years has given way to someone else entirely. She is not well-spoken enough to explain that the shift between them is a shift within her as well, so she tries a different tactic.

Her hand curls beneath his chin, and she lowers her face to his. This kiss is different from the first — gentle, timid, exploratory. She wants to know what it feels like to kiss him when the world is quiet, when there are no raging sirens, when grief is fresh but not immediate. That fire is still there — still bright — but it’s harnessed, controlled, flickering like a hearth in the center of a house. She wonders what might happen if she stoked it a little further, but she refrains. She does, however, ease her eyes open, watching his lashes flutter and his expression soften, and feels her own heart soften and flutter in return. 

Koschei takes the initiative to end the kiss, and Theta obliges him. Her fingers linger on his jaw, keeping the space between them intimate. If she keeps him close, it feels less like the ground between their feet might shatter. It feels less like they’ll be torn apart as soon as she treads wrong and makes a mistake, and she knows she’s bound to make a mistake eventually. She always does. She could have found hope earlier, and it’s mostly her fault that she didn’t. She discounted her chances and threw away opportunities time and time again.

“A kiss isn’t an answer, love,” Koschei says, voice smooth and quiet.

Worry spurs Theta’s tongue forward a breakneck pace. “Isn’t it? I wouldn’t have done that before today. Something’s changed. Isn’t that important? Doesn’t that mean something? I don’t just run around kissing people.” She’s talking too quickly and too widely, broadcasting the depth and intensity of her nervousness. She can feel the sweat building on her palms, and she knows that she’s mere moments from ruining this altogether. He will be angry with her; she knows he will. 

But confusion — not anger — takes up residence in Koschei’s expression. “I don’t run around kissing people either.” 

Theta sniffs. “Does it matter? You didn’t kiss me. I kissed you.” 

“Is it a competition now?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe.” A shrug rolls across her shoulders and she looks away from him, allowing her hand to drop into her lap, breaking the contact between them. 

Koschei sighs, eyes falling to Theta’s lips as he adjusts his strategy. “Would you feel better if I kissed you? Would you talk to me? Would you honestly tell me what you want?”

Theta shrugs again. “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. Wouldn’t hurt.” 

That is good enough for Koschei. He is upon her in a moment. 

She has a split second to breathe in that alluring mix of mint and ginger and aftershave before he coaxes that very air out of her lungs. Koschei is a better kisser than she is — more confident, more skilled, more sensual. Her skin burns as his hand slips beneath the fabric of her sweater, drawing across the delicate skin of her stomach but venturing nowhere overly untoward. Like Theta, Koschei is testing the waters.

When they part, his lips leave hers still wanting, and he drops his mouth to her throat for a fleeting moment, planting two featherlight kisses in a place that he already knows is sensitive. She threatens to melt into his touch, and for a moment, she forgets where they are, forgets the Games, forgets everything except the desire that sparks when it feels like somebody has finally glimpsed the untold depths of your soul. 

“What do you want, love?” Koschei repeats as he steps back. His arms cross over his chest as he leans against the wall, content to wait.

Theta swipes her tongue over her lips. She can still taste him there, still feel him there, still wants him there in the way she hasn’t wanted anyone else in a long time. Looking beyond the demands of her body, however, she still has doubts. She swallows hard, fighting back the panic that infringes upon her body as she dares to admit, “I want to trust you, but it’s hard. My world has changed in a matter of weeks, Koschei. _I’ve_ changed. I don’t know who I am or what I’m doing. I — I don’t want to lose myself.” 

Green eyes fill with tears and she blinks them away. Leveraging the power that he conceded to her a moment ago, she continues, shifting the focus back onto him. “I don’t want to go too far and find out that I did the wrong thing. I don’t want to look at you one day and discover that you misled me this entire time. I need more from you. Tell me about the other thing. Tell me about the rebellion. Tell me about the _why_.”   
  
She has spent weeks sharing bits and pieces of her life as he poked and prodded her for more. It is his turn to share where he stands. 

Koschei hesitates. “Children are being murdered. People are starving. Do you need more than that?” 

“There’s another why,” Theta presses. “Something personal. It’s always personal. I know the people who are suffering. They don’t like me, but I visit with them. I chat with them in the market. They teach me their jobs on the factory floor when I ask. They turn down money when I offer it. I care about them because I’ve watched them suffer and die, one by one, the same way my parents suffered and died when I was a child. You don’t visit with them. You don’t come face to face with their suffering every single day. You sit alone in that stupid house with the squeaky gate that doesn’t even belong on that street. So why do you care? _What did you lose?_ ”

His breaths are long and slow, and he avoids her eyes.

For a fleeting second, Theta fears that she pushed too far. She is about to muster an apology when Koschei finally says, “I lost my mother.”

“What happened?” 

Theta knows pieces of it, knows the beginning. She was in the crowd of tributes ready to be reaped when his name was called, saw the woman storm forward, saw her pushed back by guards, heard that she was arrested in a manner that is atypical for Reaping Day. Parents always scream, and fights are not uncommon, but they are not often punished for it. That was unusual, and people tittered about it for weeks. 

Koschei steps forward again, extending an open palm as if he’s waiting for something. 

It takes Theta a long moment to figure out what he wants, and after a confused few seconds, she puts her hand in his. He turns her palm upward and begins to trace the lines set into it. Broken lifeline, broken heartline, deep headline. She had a woman in the marketplace read her palm once, but Koschei is not doing a reading. He is simply fidgeting — memorizing pieces of her body while he gathers enough strength to bare a piece of his soul. 

“My mother had a history of lashing out against the world and those who deigned to rule it. She wasn’t there when the Games started, but her father told her stories about the way the world was before they started — not perfect, but better than it was then and is now. She clung to those stories, chanted them like mantras. She spit in the faces of soldiers and stirred unrest among all those who dared listen to her. If she knew you, I think she would have liked you.” 

Koschei’s lip trembles, and as if to compensate, he rolls back Theta’s sleeve, exposing the faded ends of her scars. One hand stays on hers, thumb stroking her palm in steady circles as the fingers of his other hand venture upward, lightly running over patterns that have always seemed far too orderly, far too exact, far too mathematical for the chaos that scribed them. 

“She taught me those stories, too. Told me that if I ever had power and a platform, I should use it. I was a child, I ignored her. None of us in the District had power. None of us even had a chance to grasp it. In other Districts, some children find hope in the Reaping, look up to the victors from their home and think maybe, just maybe, one day that will be them up there. They never volunteer, never gather up the nerve to make it happen, but they dare to dream that maybe if misfortune might befall them, they might be able to spin it in their favor.

“District 3 did not have victors. I had no reason to harbor those dreams. At most, I thought I could be a Peacekeeper, but even that seemed unlikely. You might have noticed that I’m on the shorter side. Always have been.” His head cants slightly sideways and his face quirks as if a sudden thought occurred to him, but his face resets a heartbeat later. “I didn’t have a plan for competing in the Games, nonetheless winning them, and I don’t think she did either. When she heard my name at the Reaping, something in her _snapped_.” 

His breath catches, and Theta stays bracingly still, as if she’s afraid that the tiniest movement might send him running. He rolls up her sleeve a little further, exposing the twisted centerpiece of the scarred branches, the single place where they all meet. “She hit one of the men who ran to restrain her, did you know that?” 

He looks up at Theta in search of an answer, and she shakes her head. 

“You wouldn’t’ve. There wasn’t a camera on them, just on me. I could see her though. I saw the moment when she struck at them, saw the moment when they struck back as a warning, and she kept going. She shouldn’t’ve, but she did anyway.”

Theta feels like she’s forgotten how to breathe. Koschei’s fingers skate over the inside of her elbow, following the ghostly paths, and she shivers.

“She wasn’t allowed to visit me before I left. She wasn’t allowed to say goodbye. _I_ wasn’t allowed to say goodbye, and in that moment, I resolved that I would win the Games. Me — a boy from the District that never wins. I was going to do it.”

His touch stalls, and she thinks that her heart stops beating.

“And then I did, but it didn’t matter. I don’t know what she tried to do in prison, but they killed her, Theta.” His voice breaks, and some part of Theta’s heart aches on his behalf, feeling the pain that he feels. 

“I wasn’t even told in person. I got a letter about it. Same as all the letters I’ve always gotten. Bright red, with that infernal seal and the President’s signature, and when I opened it, I wanted nothing more than to strangle him. It took me a while to figure out that I could make that happen — make him suffer the way my mother suffered. I started putting together a plan, but I kept getting distracted along the way, kept losing myself in other things, kept ruining ideas by running into roadblocks. But it’s all in place now. I’ve bided my time, and I’ve gathered the right people and I want to watch him _burn_ , Theta. I want to tear this whole place down and build the world that my mother believed in, a world that wouldn’t have slaughtered her while her son was dying. I don’t even care if I’m the one to do it, I just want to make sure it happens.”

A tear traces the contours of Koschei’s face. It glistens in the light of the bathroom, and without disturbing his touch on her arm, Theta raises a hand to wipe it away. 

When she speaks, her voice is unusually quiet. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea. About any of it.” 

“Why would you? You never cared.” His words are vitriolic, but Theta doesn’t take them personally. After all, it’s a habit that she shares. She’s lanced him a hundred times in the same way, lashing out whenever the burden of her own pain grew too terrible to bear. 

“I care now. I want to help you." She breathes in deeply, summoning every ounce of her courage and chasing away her fear, fighting to be open and honest with him. "Koschei Oakdown, I think I —“

The confession dies in her throat as a small hand taps on the door frame. 

Both of their heads whip around to view the intruder. Rennette stands in the doorway, looking very much the picture of a child who has stared into the face of death for the first time. Her hair is wild, her eyes haunted, her posture sagging. She does not look like a tribute who might beat the odds and emerge victorious from a death match. She looks like a _child_ — bruised and scared and brutally out of her depth. 

“Are you busy?” the girl’s voice is little louder than a whisper — raspy and hoarse from hours of crying. 

“ _No_.” Theta and Koschei say quickly and in tandem, hands dropping away from each other as the stolen moment of intimacy is shattered by ticking clocks and the turn of the wheel as the Games move steadily onwards, crushing all those who lie beneath, purposefully ignorant to the lives and needs of the people who are affected by them.

As Theta eases herself off of the counter, Koschei clears his throat, blots his tears, and crouches in front of Rennette, meeting her on her level. “Did you need something?” 

Rennette looks past him, locking eyes with Theta. “I want to learn how to electrocute someone.” 

Theta freezes. A chill trespasses across her skin and down her spine and she instinctively moves to tug her shirtsleeve down, once again covering her scarred arm. Silence lingers for a painfully long moment, lasting so long that Koschei turns to look over his shoulder at her, concern and curiosity visibly at war upon his face. 

Eventually, Theta manages to find her tongue. “I don’t know if you can anymore. They re-engineered the technical systems after my Games in order to prevent people from following in my footsteps.”

“Teach me anyway.” It is a demand, not a question. 

Rennette’s stare burns into Theta’s soul and makes her skin crawl. 

The scent of burning flesh fills Theta’s nostrils and she starts to fall back into her memories. 

Before she knows it, Koschei’s standing in front of her with one hand pressed to her face and the other on her waist. His warmth and the sharp scent of his breath cuts through the tide of memories as he says, “Stay here, love.”

Theta swallows, and it takes a moment for the echoes to fall away and for the world to exist only as it is and not as it once was. 

Koschei leans forward, lips hovering next to her ear as he says, “If you can’t, you don’t have to.” The words are barely louder than the swell of his lungs, quiet enough that Rennette has absolutely no chance of overhearing them.

It is tempting to say no, to continue burying herself in denial and avoidance until there is nothing left, but Theta shakes her head. She has to do this. She promised Rennette that she would do everything possible to guarantee her survival, and if that means facing her own actions, so be it.

“I can. I will. Just, stay with me. _Please_.” 

She is relying on Koschei to draw her out if she goes too far. He knows her habits, knows the signs, knows when she’s breaking, and she’ll need that if she has any hope of making it through the impromptu lesson. 

Koschei nods. “If you need anything, anything at all, just tell me.”

Theta swallows and untangles herself from him. “Go find a place to sit, Rennette, I’ll rustle up a camera, I suppose…and a stick. Always need a good stick for something like this.”


	34. Chapter 34

Night passes far too quickly, forced into premature obscurity by the desperate need that brought Rennette to Theta and Koschei’s door.

For the entire duration of their last-minute training session, Theta does her absolute best to swallow her trauma, compartmentalizing both the reality of her actions and the reality of Rennette’s _intentions_ , and trying to view the tinkering as just another puzzle. _It’s a camera_ , she reminds herself over and over again. _It doesn’t mean anything_ , and if she ignores the bitter, metallic tang that still lingers on the back of her tongue, she can almost claim success.

Koschei spends most of these hours in silence, making an marked effort to maintain a point of contact with Theta at all times. Sometimes it is a hand against the small of her back, sometimes it is a foot pressed against hers, and for a while it is a leg lazily slung across her lap while he dozes off. It was an effective strategy. Whenever Theta feels herself wandering, she uses his presence as an anchor to pull herself back into the moment, focusing on the warmth and steadiness of his touch and chasing away the haunting echoes of screams and the memory of the shock that threatened to rip her body apart.

Rennette absorbs the information concerningly quickly, almost as if she was designed and built for the sole purpose of committing murder. That is another thing that Theta does her best to ignore. Should Rennette manage to emerge from the Games alive and victorious, then Theta will place her current hesitations aside and deal with the bloodthirstiness and the aftermath as best as she knows how. She wonders if, between herself and Koschei, they might be able to help a victor from drifting too far adrift and falling too deeply into the pain and grief that has so long plagued them.

So far as plans go, it is both vague and a tad overambitious. After all, it has only been days since Theta stopped passively chasing death, she is in no position to try to help someone else, and there is no telling what further sins Koschei might ask her to commit in order to see his plan to fruition. Her newfound peace is precarious, and should she end up with blood on her hands again, she does not doubt that she will fall back into the clutches of misery.

That does not even dare to consider what might happen should they fail, and if Koschei somehow finds himself dead or imprisoned or worse.

The effects would be catastrophic.

For better or for worse, Theta and Koschei are heavily reliant on each other. Their current symbiosis is delicate, and their trust is both new and fragile, yet Theta has fallen into it so thoroughly that she fears that she might become directionless if it is taken from her. Koschei has helped draw her out of the darkness, given her a glimpse of hope and love and a brighter future. If she loses that, she will be both unmoored and positively dangerous. It is an unpleasant and terrifying thought, and she squashes it before it has a chance to fully mature.

Theta cannot allow herself to get lost in thoughts of the past and the future. For now, there needs to be only the present — only the Games and the wires in her lap and the girl in front of her and whatever it is that Koschei’s plan entails.

Theta and Koschei manage to steal a couple hours of sleep before Romana and Amy rouse them into wakefulness, this time with a civilized knock on the door instead of a wild sweep through the closet. Perhaps the change can be chalked up to the face that the pair is not yet late. Or perhaps it is because Sparrow’s death still hangs heavy over them. Or, simpler still, perhaps it is just because today isn’t about Theta and Koschei. It’s about Rennette.

It should have been about Sparrow, too, but his life was taken too early. Truthfully, his death still doesn’t feel real to Theta, but in the madness of the Capitol, few things feel real. There is something about the surreal nature of the atmosphere that manages to sink its claws into everything it touches, even the thankless violence of the Games. 

However, even with Amy occupying an extra seat at the breakfast table, the boy’s absence is tangible. There are no buzzing questions, no insistent comments, no indignant shuffles of swinging feet on hardwood. In his absence, there is merely disinterested fidgeting, downturned eyes, and an endless parade of yawns from both victors and the only remaining tribute.

Eventually, the yawning becomes so pervasive that Romana lifts her gaze and poses a delicate question. “Did anyone sleep?”

Theta remains stubbornly silent, working her mouth around a large bite of apple.

Koschei’s hand strays to Theta’s knee, but he, too, declines to answer.

In the end, Rennette speaks first.

“It was my fault. I asked for their help.”

Koschei sets his fork down on the edge of his plate, and Theta blinks at the sharpness of the noise. “She did.”

Amy’s head tilts with mild interest, but something in her eyes is unshakably, irreparably grief-stricken. It seeps some of her usual energy, and as her gaze sweeps the assembled group, it strikes Theta as sluggish and oddly weary. The thought is only confirmed when she does not interject with a quip or a joke or an unsolicited piece of advice.

Romana lifts a single delicate brow. “A last minute lesson? Dare we ask on what?”

“Electrocution,” Rennette says as if it is the easiest and most natural answer in the world.

The color drains from Theta’s face as she feels everyone’s attention turn to her. She forgets how to breathe, and she sets her apple down on a napkin as her hand begins to shake.

Reflexively, Koschei’s fingers tighten on her leg, seeking to hold her steady.

“Is that so?” Romana asks, not bothering to look up from her own plate as she cuts a corner off of a pastry. “I thought it was no longer possible to conduct that kind of mayhem in the Arena.”

Koschei takes the initiative to answer on Theta’s behalf. “There are sometimes electronics available in the Cornucopia. Battery-operated flashlights, mostly, though once at a Quarter Quell there was a set of walkie-talkies to encourage and exploit the alliances that formed in the early stages of the Games. Rennette may not be able to wipe out an entire Arena, but it would not be all that difficult to set a single person trap or rig a makeshift taser, given access to the correct materials. It would be irresponsible of us to deny a tribute a skill that might end up saving their life.

Wordlessly, Theta nods, turning her eyes down to her abandoned apple. She reaches out a hand and pushes the short stem around in circles. She doesn’t want to speak on the subject, doesn’t want to think back to her own history of denying pair after pair of tributes the insight that might have allowed them to survive the impossible. She needs to remember that there is nothing that she can do to rewrite the past, andthat all she can do is move forward and do what she can for Rennette. However, she also knows that moving on and helping Rennette will not be enough. Rennette might still die, and regardless of the outcome, Theta will never have a clear conscience. No penance is large enough for true atonement. All she can do is try to make peace with her reality. It is what Koschei keeps trying to teach her on rooftops and in elevators and through tales of his own suffering, but despite all that has passed between them, she still has a difficult time letting go.

Healing is a process — slower and more agonizing than falling in love — and nigh impossible in an environment that is this triggering. However, she is trying. Trying is all that she can do, and it is far better than doing nothing at all.

“Could be helpful in a pinch,” Theta says after a long pause — tongue leaden and throat dry.

No one dares to investigate the subject further, and after a terribly long series of minutes, Koschei removes the napkin from his lap and drops it onto the surface of the table with a flourish. “I’m going to prepare for the day. I’ll be back in time for goodbyes.” He stands, and extends a hand to Theta. “Care to come with me?”

After a second’s hesitation, Theta nods and takes his hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet. Anything is better than the sorrow and worry that line the breakfast table.

“I’ll do your hair for you,” Amy offers. “Just come back when you’re ready. Or yell. Whichever.” A shrug ripples across her shoulders to punctuate the wandering thought.

“I will.” Theta nods in Amy’s direction before Koschei pulls her down the hallway.

“Thank you,” she says once the door closes and they are finally cut off from the rest of the world.

“If Rennette does use your skills, you’ll have to talk about it eventually, you know.” Koschei observes, keeping Theta’s hand in his as he tugs her closer. His eyes seek out the depths of hers as he lifts his opposite hand, running the back of a finger over the angles of her face as if his mere touch can draw truth out from its hiding places beneath her skin.

Theta shivers.

“I know,” she says quietly.

“If not with the world, then you will need to discuss it with Rennette.”

Again, Theta nods. She closes her eyes for a moment, steeling herself and gathering her thoughts before she dares to ask the questions that Koschei’s been avoiding, the questions that she has won the right to, now that she has committed herself to his cause. “Will there be a world left, if she wins? If you kill the President, what does the world you build look like? Will people finally be allowed to forget?"

Something hard and unreadable trespasses across Koschei’s eyes. It is not the wall of the mask, rather, it sits more akin to icy resolve. “No. If we rebuild Panem, we cannot allow people to forget the horrors that defined it. If the people forget, then they will do it again. We have to remind them what we saved their children from.”

Theta does not meet his aspirations in kind. “How will there be peace if people are not allowed to forget? If there are reminders of the horrors we lived through?”

“Not everyone is as affected by the Games as we are. For most people, it is entertainment. Perhaps they know a classmate or a neighbor that was reaped, but it did not shape their lives in the way that it shaped ours. There is no harm in issuing a few warnings. After all, those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.”

It is a familiar enough idea. It is possesses some of the same logic that the government uses to justify the reaping and the Games, and even though Koschei has turned it on its head, it still leaves a poor taste in Theta’s mouth.

She would very much like to distance herself from her history. Every part of her screams to run from this place, from the Games, from a world that will never allow her to truly move past it. Even a world without the Games will still feel its effects for years, and for her, it feels as though that necessary period of healing will only be lengthened by issuing harsh, threatening reminders of the way things were — the way things could be again, should something go terribly awry.

Theta’s tongue wets her lips. “There is harm to us, to Yaz, to the others who suffered as we suffered.” It does not occur to her to mention the toll that the Games take on the families of the tributes. She didn’t have a family when she was reaped — not even an adoptive one. The Tylers were long gone by then.

Koschei shrugs, and instead of further justifying his position, he offers up appeasement. “I'm not married to the idea, and besides, we can go somewhere else, love. Build our own space far away from all this. There is no rule demanding that we must stay.”

As he speaks, he steps backward, allowing his touch to fall away from her face. Taking both her hands in his, he rubs his thumbs over her palms. It is obvious to Theta that he is distracting her, trying to keep her out of the weeds lest she withdraw her support.

Despite his infatuation, he is wary of her — wary of her impulsiveness, wary of her values, wary of her inherent unpredictability.

_Let him be wary._

“There is nowhere to go,” Theta observes. Her eyes fall to their entwined hands, tracking his movements as they whisper over her skin.

“There is a world outside of Panem. Countries across the sea. We may not have communication with them, but they existed before the war, they must exist now. We could find a person with a boat worthy of a journey, hop onto it and allow it to take us across the world. You would never have to see Panem again, if you wanted.” Koschei’s eyes grow bright, and a hint of an excited smile breathes life and enthusiasm into his expression, chasing away the fear that existed there a moment ago.

Theta’s face contorts in confusion, and her gaze darts upwards again, seeking out Koschei’s own. “I thought you wanted to rule Panem, to shape it in your image.” That was his initial proposal, at least, before she even knew that there was actually a plan. He had tangled his fingers in her hair and leaned in close and offered her a place ruling the world at his side. Maybe he had been exaggerating, or maybe there were certain words that he was unwilling to use back then.

Maybe there are things that he is _still_ unwilling to tell her.

Koschei steps backward again, and Theta allows her hands to slip from his. He disappears into the closet as he says, “I want Rassilon to suffer, and I would like to have a hand in reshaping the country, but I do not want to conduct the day to day affairs of ruling. There is no worse fate than a pile of paperwork and a line of petitioners asking for favors. Boring, don’t you think?”

He emerges from the closet with a set of clothes in either hand, and holds one out to Theta. Hesitantly, she takes it and steps into the bathroom. She leaves the door open, however, the sharp cut of the corner hides them from each other’s view. As she begins to strip, she asks, “Who would you trust with leading the country in your stead?”

Theta is genuinely curious. Koschei doesn’t seem like a person who trusts many people. He doesn’t even fully trust _her_ , despite his countless claims to love. Other than that, there is Romana, who she knows is in on his plan, and apparently _Ushas_ , judging by her part in his disappearance and reappearance, though Theta is still unaware of most of the details that comprise that particular arrangement. He still has not told her how Ushas was able to make him disappear. 

Koschei’s answer floats through the open doorway. “I have a list.”

“Who’s on it?” Theta knows that if she pushes too hard, he will likely shut down, but she is also unwilling to swallow nonanswers. She gave him the commitment that he wanted, and that entitles her to information. If she is risking her life for him, then she has a right to know what she’s walking into.

Koschei continues to dodge the question. “A few people.”

“Will you share it?” she pushes again, a little bit harder this time.

Koschei holds firm. “No.”

Theta bristles, and once she has donned an undershirt, she pokes her head back through the door, spitting her irritation. “I thought agreeing to participate in your scheme entitled me to relevant information? You told me I could learn things if I agreed to work with you.

Immediately, Koschei turns his back to her while he buttons his own shirt. “No, I told you that I couldn’t tell you anything while you weren’t working with me. That does not mean that I’m obligated to spill everything now. One never knows who might be listening, and I don’t want to commit to an uncertain future.”

Stepping back into the relative privacy bathroom, Theta sighs. “I swept the apartment for bugs and disabled the cameras. No one’s listening. Plus, doesn’t overthrowing _any_ government constitute an uncertain future by default?” She’s tired of these little games — the asking and the not answering, the agreeing and the denying, the trusting and the retreating. She assumed that they would stop once she dared to fall and he deigned to catch her, but it would seem that though Koschei is capable of being gentle and affectionate, that does not make him open or _kind_.

Hopping on first one foot and the other, Theta tugs on her trousers and steps out into the open again, fingers working on the buttons of a jacket the color of the evening sky.

Koschei meets her reentrance with a grin — wild and desperate and savoring a victory that has not yet come to pass. Despite her irritation — or perhaps because of it — that energy sparks fire in Theta’s belly, rising to meet it in kind.

“No. There is no future except our future. If we do not win this year, then we will win next year. We are _inevitable_.”

Theta sniffs, tempering the flames before they have a chance to distract her from the conversation at hand. This is too important. “Can’t be that inevitable if you never told me what you require of me.”

Dark eyebrows raise. “Didn’t I?”

“No.”

Koschei circles around to sit on the edge of the bed, tugging a pair of shoes out from under it and beginning to pick at the knotted laces. “What do you know about electromagnetic pulses? Can you rig up a device to create one strong enough to knock out every camera in, say, a quarter of a mile radius?”

Theta’s tongue works at the point of a single canine as she considers both his demeanor and the question. Koschei seems incredibly calm and open for someone who just refused to share the specifics of his succession plan, and she cannot quite seem to gauge whether or not his mask is up.

“I’d need some tools that are not widely available,” she says after a long moment’s pause.

Koschei glances up as he slips his feet into first one shoe and then the other. “Give me a list of what you need, and I’ll get it from Ushas.”

“If you’re such close friends with Ushas, why can’t you just sabotage the Games directly? Bring down the forcefield? Let everyone run?” Even as the words leave her lips, Theta is aware that they are built on a fantasy. If things were that simple, that kind of uprising would have happened years ago.

“Ushas has an interest in averting suspicion.” Koschei’s answer is delicate. If the mask was not up before, it most certainly is now. Under different circumstances, Theta would resent that he is still using it in her presence, however, she begrudgingly respects the fact that he is willing to lie in order to protect his allies. She would try to do the same for him, though whether or not she is an effective liar remains a heavily contested topic.

“But will she help Rennette?” The question spills forth too quickly to read as anything other than desperate.

Koschei pauses his movements as he stares up at her, one hand braced on his thigh. “Ushas won’t move to hurt her directly, but she cannot control what the other tributes might do.”

A laugh heaves from Theta’s lungs, but it gets tangled somewhere in her throat. When it finally enters the air, it is broken and twisted and skeptical. “She could do more.” A precarious accusation to make, given that Theta herself has spent the last fifteen years refusing to do the bare minimum to do her job and keep her tributes alive.

Koschei’s shoulders lift in the ghost of a shrug. “I will take the help that she is willing to give. It took no small amount of persuasion for me to get her on my side.”

“Did you sleep with her?” The question leaves Theta’s lips before she can stop it, and as soon as she realizes what she said, regret and anxiety set her heart racing. Impulsively, she ducks back into the sanctuary provided by the bathroom, grabbing a cool, damp towel from the counter and attempting to wipe the worry from her face.

Her counterpart’s familiar laughter follows her inside. “She would never want that. Ushas exists above such things. I merely offered her promises that appealed to her interests.”

“Which are?” Theta tosses the towel aside and braces her arms against the counter as she attempts to collect herself — elbows locked and eyes down.

“Science, experimentation, and her independence. Without the Games, she will be free to pursue her own interests and have the resources required to do so.”

His voice grows ever closer, and a shadow falls across the sink. His breath trickles against the outside of her ear, and she can feel the heat radiating off of his skin, but he does not touch her.

Theta swallows, but she does not look up.

When she declines to speak, Koschei adds dryly, “If we happen to encounter anyone I’ve slept with, I’ll tell you, though I must admit, it’s highly endearing that you’re so worried about it.”

“I’m not worried,” she replies. Her lie is utterly unconvincing, and when she finally gathers the courage to look up at their shared reflection, she catches sight of the smug smile that has worked its way across Koschei’s lips.

Anger and embarrassment flare in her belly, and she reaches over to grab the wet towel, tossing at his head as she steps past Koschei and back into the bedroom, retreating from the overwhelming immediacy of his physical presence.

“If you say so.” The smirk works its way into his words, lifting their edges with untempered glee.

Theta hurries across the floor, intent on leaving him, finding Amy, and chasing the blush from her cheeks and her collarbones.

A cheery whistle begins to chase Theta out of the room, however, it is interrupted by a hasty, last-minute question.

“Oh, and _love_?”

Theta pauses mid-step, hand hovering over the panel that controls the bedroom door. Her tongue swipes over her lips as she considers whether or not she is willing to hear out whatever words might follow the three syllable summons. “What?”

Thankfully, it is not a flirtation.

“Get me that list by this afternoon, if you would. The deeper into the Games we get, the harder it is to demand Ushas’ attention.”

“Remind me, then. I’ll forget. I always do.”

He does not answer, but the whistle resumes.

Theta disappears through the door, ready to find Amy, dig her heels in, and do her absolute best to stretch these final moments before mentors are forced to part ways with their tributes into the largest eternity that she can muster.

It is a mission doomed to failure before it even begins.

The time for denial and dalliances has passed. The Hunger Games are finally starting, and their pace will only grow more and more frenzied with each passing heartbeat.


	35. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter before the Games start....*cue dramatic music*

The atmosphere at the front door of the apartment is tense.

Mentors are not allowed to accompany their tributes to the Arena. Instead, their presence is demanded at the parties that surround the betting tables, brushing shoulders with the elites and negotiating sponsorships and favors for their tributes. It is yet another aspect of the mentorship duties at which Theta has never excelled, and despite the heartbreak that would spawn from watching Rennette step onto her pedestal and be carried upwards into the Arena, Theta would much rather be allowed to be there.

Underneath the Arena, it is appropriate to cry. Expected, even. At the parties, however, one is always expected to put their best foot forward — to offer up smiles to the uncaring hoard, to cheer when blood is shed, and to make jokes at the expense of the weak and disenfranchised. Theta is not naturally inclined towards any such activities, and as with every other sector of her life, she struggles to pretend to be anything other than what she is. She cannot slip between personas the way that Koschei does. She cannot forge and don a protective armor of lies. All she can do is struggle to get by, and under the current circumstances, that does not seem like it will be enough.  
  
At least she'll have Koschei at her back. She finds a tiny smidgeon of hope in the idea. Alone, she would surely flounder, but together they might be able to make something of this — temper each other's worst impulses and fight for the best for their charge. 

The victors approach the front of the apartment hand in hand. Trepidation creeps just beneath the surface of Theta’s skin, and though she does not look over at Koschei, she can feel the shaking tension in his grip.

Amy has already disappeared, off to chase after last minute tasks. Only Romana and Rennette stand in front of the door. Upon seeing Theta and Koschei, Romana offers up a tired, cursory smile. Rennette, however, greets them with a tightly clenched jaw, pain in her eyes, and a strict nod. The girl is in simple clothes, not yet doomed to the uniform that might very well become her funeral shroud. That is unsurprising. Since the uniform provided to the tributes often provides information about the climate and layout of the Arena, the Hunger Games officials hold off on releasing the uniforms until the last possible moment. Theta’s year, the uniforms had been leather jackets and thick denim pants that could hold up to the rips and tears of forest undergrowth. Koschei’s year, the tributes were provided boots designed for climbing and padded gloves. Yaz’s year, tributes were bundled head to toe in thick layers.

Rennette could face anything — swamplands, rainforest, desert, a bombed city in ruins — and the entirety of Panem will find out what it is at the same time the tributes rise from the ground on their pedestals, blinking and blinded and panicked while the countdown ticks away. Theta tries to remind herself that this little girl can survive this unknown — that survival is the only option available to them — but her resolve seeps through an open wound, and she doesn’t know how to staunch the bleeding. After Sparrow’s death at the interviews, it feels as though all bets are off. Rennette could easily be a target, and she’s so unbelievably small compared to the teenagers that she’ll be fighting.

Koschei speaks first, detangling his fingers and looking down at Rennette. “I’d like to speak to you alone, if that’s all right.”

Concern tightens Theta’s brow, and she opens her mouth, ready to mount a protest, but at the last possible moment, she swallows it back. This exchange isn’t about her. It isn’t fair of her to co-opt Rennette’s last few minutes of peace. If the girl is open to speaking to Koschei in private, then so be it.

Rennette nods in reply, and Koschei leads her off down the hallway, leaving Theta alone with Romana.

“Are you okay?” Theta asks, pulling her attention away from the space that Koschei had left behind and turning her eyes towards Romana. The Capitol representative looks tired. Not even the shade of her hat can hide the dark circles beneath her eyes.

“As fine as ever,” Romana breezes, but her words are unconvincing. Even without the insight that Amy provided, Theta would be able to tell that something is wrong. Any other year, she would not have cared, but this year she has been consistently challenged to do better, and despite her own grief and exhaustion, she continues to strive to meet those standards. If she stopped trying, her guilt would rise to overwhelm her, and she already contends with enough of it.

“You’re allowed to not be okay, you know,” Theta comments, turning her face away to afford Romana a moment of feigned privacy. “I’m not okay. Don’t think I’ve ever been okay. Not to make it about me or anything. I’m just saying I won’t judge you if you are.” A shrug rolls across her shoulders, shaking away the constant slink of anxiety as it tries to wrest control of her body.

Romana exhales through her nose, and Theta can hear her shoes shift against the hardwood floor. “This never gets any easier, does it?”

“Why would it? It never changes.” The words are mired in sulking darkness. As long as the Games persist, children will keep meeting their deaths in the Arena, and whether you choose to emotionally distance yourself from them or not, they are still _children_. There is no way to contort the current reality into just reasoning. People try. The President and his followers speak of punishing the Districts, painting reminders of the consequences of war, scaring them into willing obedience, but only the exempt, the hopelessly deluded, and those who stand to benefit from the slaughter buy it as truth.

“When I was first assigned to this position,” Romana says, delicately picking her way through words and memories, “My instructors told us that we would grow used to it. That we would learn that this is the way things must be, that it would become easier and easier to bear, and if we excelled, we would eventually place out.”

Theta turns back towards Romana, interestedly tilting her head and sweeping her gaze across the woman’s expression. “And you believed them?”

“I would have been forced to remain in this job regardless of whether or not I believed them. At the time, it seemed safer to hope for the best. I don’t think I have the capacity for hope anymore.”

Theta raises an eyebrow. “I thought you applied for another job?”

“They declined me. It is generally discouraged to seek other placements unless you are tapped, and I was not. You were not given a choice about whether or not you wished to pursue this line of work, and I was not given one either. We are locked into this for life, you and I.”

The final sentence feels like bait. Romana’s eyes seem to seek out weakness in Theta’s own, testing for cracks. Bitter worry spreads across Theta’s tongue. She wonders if Romana knows that she wasn’t asleep that night, or if she simply assumed that Koschei has finally let Theta in on their plans.

Theta swallows, before cautiously offering hope, “There is still time for things to change. It doesn’t have to be like this forever.”

Romana’s eyes scan Theta appraisingly, glancing up then down and then up again. Seconds drag into an eternity as Theta awaits the woman’s response, and her fear intensifies with every heartbeat. She shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. She should have left well enough alone.

“Perhaps,” Romana finally says, turning her gaze forward as the sound of an opening door echoes down the hallway.

As the Koschei and Rennette reemerge from their brief moment of privacy, Theta’s attention darts between them, desperately seeking out hints about the information that she has been denied, however, she finds little in the way of evidence outside of a flash of a moment when Rennette taps the outside of a pocket, as if checking to see if its contents are still inside. In and of itself, that is not unusual. Tributes are allowed to bring a single personal item into the Arena. It cannot be something that can be fashioned into a weapon, and more often than not, it’s a piece of inherited jewelry — a locket or a ring meant to remind them of the family that they left behind. However, she wonders if Koschei gave Rennette something, and if so, what that might be.

If so, it would be an oddly sentimental gesture.

“If you also want privacy, Theta, we would be happy to oblige,” Koschei says smoothly. He pretends not to notice the frantic darting of her eyes, but she knows that he always catalogs every little thing she does. He draws closer and his hand settles on her side — touch gentle and featherlight against the fabric of her suit.

Theta shakes her head. She’s never been good at goodbyes. The important losses in her life have always been marked by a specific lack of farewells. Her parents passed before she was old enough to comprehend death’s finality. Rose’s death was sudden and instant, and after that, the Tylers’ disappearance happened without prelude, not that it mattered. She barely spoke to them in the weeks leading up to it. Even on her Reaping Day, no one came to visit her. No one hugged her as she cried. No one lied and told her that everything was going to be okay. No one made her promise to come back to them.

In the past years of her mentorship, she barely engaged with the tributes, and as such, these moments of parting were impersonal. This year, it’s different, and she doesn’t know what to do or what to say. No words are enough to capture the mess of emotions that swirls in her chest and plagues her heart. Nothing she says will fix this, nothing will make it easier, nothing will make Rennette feel any more loved and less alone in the confines of the Arena. There is no spell to ward off death, no chant of protection, no promise of peace.

“I’m sorry you have to do this,” Theta says eventually, tongue leaden and tone ragged. She sits precariously perched on the edge of tears, but she fights them back. They won’t help anything; they’ll only ruin the makeup that Amy so fastidiously applied. “I’m sorry the world failed you, and I’m sorry we can’t fix it.”

It’s not a goodbye, strictly speaking, but it overflows with a doomed sense of finality.

Rennette looks up at her, dark eyes alert and unreadable. It is not the first time that Theta has looked at this girl and contemplated how much like Koschei she is. She is quiet, calculating, determined, and like him, she holds her heart close to her chest. She is much younger than Koschei had been at his Reaping — in children, a handful of years and the onset of puberty marks an eternity — but Theta cannot help but wonder if she has it in her to replicate Koschei’s quietly dutiful slaughter.

Even before Theta was doomed to enter the Games, she lacked the heart to watch them, but she knows the details of Koschei’s victory. She even saw every kill marked on his suit at a party two weeks ago — bloody wounds recreated in glittering red stones against the crisp white of his suit. Slit throats and impaled organs and a nicked artery abounded. The resolve required to wield that knife over and over again is incomprehensible to Theta. She would have floundered, dropped it before she had a chance to raise it so much as a second time, however, in this child, she sees the stone-cold determination that she has always lacked staring back at her.

Rennette could do it, if she wanted to.

“Why are you apologizing?” the girl asks. Her voice sounds distant amidst the roiling of Theta’s thoughts, and it takes a painful moment of deliberate focus for Theta to manage to drag her awareness back into the present moment.

For a moment, her tongue toys with a lie. Something pretty, something that doesn’t leave her vulnerable in front of a doomed child and her own colleagues, but she swallows it back. Lying to Rennette would mean doing her a disservice. “Because I don’t know what else is worth saying.”

Rennette tilts her head, tightly wound curls sweeping across her shoulder as she regards Theta with a curiosity that leaves the victor feeling perilously exposed. “Haven’t you done this before?”

Koschei’s fingers tighten against her side, reminding Theta that she doesn’t have to answer if she doesn’t want to.

But she wants to.

She owes Rennette this, in the names of all of the poor children that she failed to help. She can’t change her past, but she can do better in the present.

“Not in this way, no.”

Silence settles into the air around the group — heavy and stifling. No one dares to break it. Theta wonders if they, too, are out of their depth.

As Romana said, this never gets any easier.

Twenty-three children always die, and since Theta, no one from District 3 has managed to find their way to victory.

Perhaps this year is the year that that changes. This year certainly _feels_ different, but that is less attributable to the tribute standing before her than to her own level of engagement, not to mention the strange and strained circumstances that surround this particular Games.

“I’m going to try to win,” Rennette declares after a moment, reaching a hand into her pocket and tightening a fist around whatever unseen trinket lurks within it.

Theta nods. “I’ll help,” she says before quickly correcting that assurance a moment later. “ _We’ll_ help.” She means to add something else, but the sentiment dies before she can finish voicing it. Koschei picks up the thought and runs with it. “As I told you, be aware of the cameras at all times. Play up the drama if you have to. The people in the Capitol will eat up an underdog story if you sell it to them, and that will make it easier to get them to sponsor you. Medicine, food, matches — whatever little thing you need, we can get it for you if you help.”

Rennette inclines her head in acknowledgement, but a haze of boredom overruns her expression. She is clearly tired of hearing advice. Theta doesn’t blame her. When gazing into the face of death, even well-intended platitudes feel useless.

“I’m going to try to win, you know,” Rennette reminds them, shifting her weight from foot to foot, anxious to be out of the crosshairs of this awkward examination.

“I know,” Theta says, with a confidence surprises even her.

Koschei snaps his head up, eyes raking over Theta.

Theta ignores him, keeping her attention entirely fixed upon the tribute.   
  
"We’re rooting for you,” she adds for good measure.

And with a quick check of the time and a final exchange of worried nothings, they finally part ways.

It takes mere seconds for that brief moment of confidence to slip through Theta’s fingers and the claws of anxiety to sink back into her flesh.


	36. Chapter 36

Theta is always struck by how clean the betting rooms look.

From the furniture to the walls to the flooring, everything is bright, blinding white — the clinical sort of white that ought to be impossible to maintain, given the volume of people who pass through here and the sheer amount of red wine consumed on a near-nightly basis. It cuts a stark contrast to the Games themselves. In very short order, dirt and blood and grime will be projected onto dozens of screens, each devoted a different angle of the suffering, and even now, a brutal display of the current betting odds spans the entirety of one wall. Twenty-two haunted photos stare out at the crowd, positioned directly opposite pairs of numbers that signify the belief of the elite.

Sparrow has already been struck from the record.

So, too, has the boy who murdered him. His disqualification will pass upon the start of the Games. Normally, tributes don’t manage to earn a disqualification this early in the process, and instead have a mid-game judgement passed upon them by way of engineered rock falls or sudden fires, but there is still enough precedent to declare the District 2 tribute’s fate with some certainty. The clock will count down, and his pedestal will explode.

The very thought of it leaves Theta’s mouth dry.

She almost stops walking, but Koschei’s insistent hand in the small of her back nudges her onward.

Groups of people mingle in small circles — friends and colleagues and confidants catching up on the news and listening to each other’s predictions. Half the circles have a single victor clinging to the side, already hard at work establishing and reigniting relationships with those with the means and interest to sponsor. As Theta and Koschei pass these pods, faces turn their way. Heads incline towards Koschei in nods of acknowledgement, and he smiles back at them. Theta’s own eyes peel away from the masses and hone in on Koschei’s expression, seeking out the cracks in his mask, both intensely jealous and deeply loathing of his ability to compartmentalize his pain and emotions in order to get a job done.

She already feels inadequate — a prop being dragged along to put on a show, not a partner painted as his equal.

Her pace slows, shoes dragging against the immaculate marble flooring with a piercing shriek. It’s not an intentional cry for attention, but Koschei circles around, coming to a stop in front of her. His hands sit on her waist as his earnest eyes seek out her own.

“Relax,” he says, his voice barely louder than a whisper. Amidst the hum and buzz of the crowd, it is not strictly necessary that he be that quiet, but no doubt it makes him feel better. The sort of person who spends years planning a rebellion must, by nature, also be the sort of person who takes every possible precaution, necessary or otherwise.

Theta shakes her head. The glittering pins set into her hair catch the light, and she is so close to Koschei that she can see them reflected back at her in his eyes.

“I can’t do this.” The words leave her in a rush of desperate, frantic surrender, only slightly louder than his own.

When she is away from the places that have historically defined her suffering, it is easy to tighten her jaw, grit her teeth, and claim that she can rise above them — easy to believe that this time, she can and will fight through the pain, that she’ll take Koschei’s confidence and glitter amongst the crowd, guiding Rennette to victory. When standing in the middle of these haunted places, however, that resolve is pulled from her lungs, filtered out until there’s nothing left but empty air and broken promises. She does not belong here. She is not of these people. She may stand at Koschei’s side and carry Koschei’s faith, but she is not and will never be Koschei himself

Behind her, wood smacks against wood, and she flinches, falling further into Koschei’s touch. Panicked eyes seek out the source of the noise, only to settle upon two dueling children. They are no older than five or six, clad in the same sort of distressingly formal and elaborate garb that adorns the adults in this space. They were born of the Capitol. They grew up watching the Games and learning of their purpose, but they will never carry the reality of them. They will never be at risk for reaping. They will never know what it is like to see a friend or a classmate or a neighbor tugged away from their lives and thrown into a elaborate system of execution. Even as it fills the airwaves and dominates the culture that they consume, it exists two steps away from them, never quite as real or as horrifying as it is to the children of the Districts.

Theta hates that children are here, hates that they have been taught that this is entertainment, resents the countless ways in which they will likely profit from the suffering of others once they become adults.

Koschei’s hand leaves her waist, settling on the back of her head as he keeps her close. Her fingers fidget with the lapel of his jacket, idly sliding the fabric between her fingers as she seeks to pump the brakes on the runaway train of her thoughts. The more she thinks, the harder the process becomes, the more flaws come to light, the more glaring problems branch out from this single, horrible monument at their center, the farther she pulls away.

“I can’t,” she says again. She doesn’t know why she was ever foolish enough to think that she could.

“You can,” he mumbles into her ear.

Though his touch is gentle, the words themselves are firm. There is no room for negotiation. In order for Koschei to carry out whatever parts of his plans are still kept from her view, in order for Rennette to make it out of the Arena alive, in order for the world to have some hope at being made anew, Theta _has_ to help him here. She knows that, he knows that, and most importantly, he knows that she knows that. For a moment she hates it — hates that she’s allowed him to work his way beneath her guard, hates that she opens these doors, hates that she ever let him see her heart — but that very hate falls away with every breath they take in sync, every heartbeat that flickers against her ear, every bit of his warmth that her body steals as its own.

They are together.

No matter how starkly out of place she feels in this crowd, no matter how much it makes her skin crawl, no matter how many horrible memories are dragged out of the depth of her mind, for the first time, she is not in this place alone.

She takes a sharp breath in, drawing back, pressing her palm flat against his chest as she looks at him, suddenly conscious of how intimate this moment has become despite the crowded room in which they stand. The thought sows the slightest flickerings of doubt, and though she is aware of blurred, distant figures lurking somewhere beyond them, she is terribly afraid to focus on them, to face whatever judgement lurks upon curled lips and in narrowed eyes. “People aren’t looking, are they?”

His head cants sideways, and his lips part slightly as his tongue works at the point of a single tooth, turning over some thought or another. If Theta dared to place a thought outside of her own head for five minutes, she could probably hazard a guess as to its nature — she is not as insightful as he is, but she is sharp and clever and knows him well enough that she is not as blind as she once was — but she does not dare venture out from behind her walls.

After a contemplative second, Koschei comments, “People are always looking.”

“I hate that,” Theta grumbles. Her fingers resume their fidgeting, and her eyes follow them, watching the color of his suit shift from yellow to orange. He is dressed to draw attention. A single star in this mess of blinding white, a bright contrast to the dusky glow that permeates her own clothes.

“If people look at us, it means that they are thinking about us, and if they are thinking about us, then we can leverage it to our own ends.” As he speaks, he shifts slightly, grabbing Theta’s hand and gently guiding it away from its chosen distraction, quietly demanding that her attention, too, be entirely on him. Theta sighs her exasperation through her nose, but allows him do it, moving her gaze steadily up until it meets his. He doesn’t have to ask for her focus this way; he already had most of her attention. He even commanded it from a distance in those hours and days when he disappeared. She wonders if he knows that, or if he constantly fears that she’ll fall out of his orbit if he stops pulling her closer.

“I’m not good at that. Any of it.” It is one thing for him to ask her to do something, but quite another for her to be capable of doing it.

Despite her continued protests, he continues down his line of thought. “I told you once that you draw the attention of a room, even when you don’t mean to, and I told you that I hated that. I did deeply hate it. You can say the most outlandish things and people will still listen to you. They’ll still lean in closer and ask you more. It’s not helpful, but today, in this place, you can reach ears that I can’t. You’re elusive, you’re interesting, people want to talk to you. Everyone here has already made up their minds on me, but they haven’t made up their minds on you. Use that to help me. Use it to help Rennette.”

Theta blinks once, brow tightening with confusion. “But I —“

Koschei cuts her short. “I can find you a drink, if it helps, and I will do my best to steer conversations away from problematic territory, but you have to trust me. This won’t work if you don’t trust me.”

Her eyes fall away, focusing on nothing at all. “I can’t watch the Games.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that. I asked you to talk to people.”

Theta’s tongue wets her lips with uncertainty. “But when the Games start, they’ll all be watching, and I’ll be expected to —“

Koschei’s answer is quick and easy, formed of a string of interlocked ideas bumping up against each other. “Pretend. Look somewhere else. Look at me. Look at the ceiling. And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll help you.”

“How?”

“Trust me. Just say it, love. Say you trust me, and we’ll do this together.” His fingers tighten on her hand — desperate, pleading, _insistent_.

Hesitation lines her lungs and tears at her throat, but after a long breath, Theta says, “I trust you.”

She drags her gaze back to his face, only to see pure, untempered relief flood across it.

“Come on, then. Let’s find you that drink.”

It feels like hours pass before the anthem finally fills the room and drowns out the buzzing conversations, drawing eyes towards the screens. In reality, however, it was probably no longer than 30 minutes, the entirety of which Theta spends downing a drink so strong that burns her tongue and attempting to converse with people whose names and faces she barely notices and can hardly remember. To her enormous relief, thus far, people have been more interested in the engagement than the run-up to the Games, though one well-meaning individual wished them condolences on the loss of their tribute, a sentiment that sends a chill through her body so strong that it drags her racing mind to a halt. It requires Koschei’s deft intervention to maneuver the subject elsewhere, citing some absurd bit of gossip that is scantly related and sending them careening down a side-street.

She also knows, however, that these conversations are just a warm-up, that all too soon people will talk of nothing but the Games unfolding before them, halting only to comment on a bite of food or the sudden realization that they have finished their drink. She doesn’t know what she will do then, how she’ll be expected to keep carrying on as though nothing at all has changed, but Koschei said that he would help, and she placed her trust in him.

She only hopes that she was not a fool for doing so.

Though she will not dare to watch the vast majority of the Games, she does look up upon the advent of the anthem and watch their introduction. She looks at the too-large image of Caesar Flickerman as he sits behind his desk, extolling the virtues of the Games and their many uses, a script she’s heard a thousand times before. She watches a montage of victors being crowned, a clipshow that once again, prominently features her absence, though it does contain several seconds of Koschei — young and proud and hiding behind a mask, even then. She wonders how quickly he adopted that particular trick, wonders if he knew how profoundly he would come to rely upon it in order to survive.

There is meaningless blabber between Caesar and a lower level Gamemaker as they fill time and build anticipation, minds turning over memories of their favorite and least favorite Arenas. Theta’s makes neither list.

Dread slinks beneath the surface of her skin as the minutes drag on and the words fade into an indistinguishable mass. She doesn’t remember if the buildup is usually this long — historically, she usually barricaded herself in a bathroom or hid in a corner — but it feels as though something’s wrong. Her mind immediately turns to the worst. Has something happened? Has there been another incident? Could something have malfunctioned?

She parts her lips and leans towards Koschei, ready to hiss a nervous question in his ear, but he catches her intention and shakes his head.

Theta doesn’t know what it means — whether it’s “not now” or“nothing’s wrong” or something else entirely — but she doesn’t dare to ask for clarification. She merely settles back into her own space, sits with that vague, creeping sense of discomfort, and downs the remainder of her drink, feeling it burn her throat on its way down.

Koschei wraps an arm around her waist, rubbing his thumb against her lowest rib in a rhythm that ought to be comforting, but only succeeds in driving home the passage of time. Surely something is wrong. Surely it’s not normally like this. Surely terrible news will crash down upon them at any moment.

Just when she thinks her fear might get the better of her, they cut away from Caesar and his temporary co-host, opening up upon a bright, overhead shot of this year’s Arena.

Beside her, she feels Koschei tense for a split-second before he breathes a small sigh of relief.

It takes her a moment to understand the scene spread before the cameras, to pick out details amidst the overwhelming shades of orange and beige. A labyrinth of destroyed ruins half-buried beneath dirt and orange rock and red-tinged grasses that cling to rock and metal. Towers break through the ground and tunnels break through dunes, marking caves and entrances and a thousand dead ends that will surely serve as traps. The broadcast cuts away from the overhead, cutting between cameras that offer other glimpses. Shattered glass. Unoccupied rooms interrupted only by a sheath of sunlight. A library lost to time. A natural spring bubbling underground in a location so dark that the picture grows grainy.

Her mind runs through the lessons that she and Koschei taught, the subjects that they covered, the tasks at which Rennette excelled and those at which she didn’t. She doesn’t know if they did enough, doesn’t know if they suitably prepared her for this specific space, but Koschei had relaxed. Clearly, he thinks that Rennette is equipped to handle this terrain, and though it should convince Theta of the same, it doesn’t.

The broadcast begins to cycle through the faces of the tributes as they rise from the ground in a circle around the Cornucopia that contains their only supplies. All of the children blink against the harsh, unnaturally warm light of the sun as they fight to establish their bearings. Rennette’s face flashes in the screen, and Theta turns her eyes away before her brain has a chance to register the girl’s expression.

At the moment, she doesn’t have room for more pain.

The countdown starts, spoken in a detached mechanical voice.

“10…9…8…”

Theta’s breath catches. The echoes of her old fear ripple through her body. The memory of adrenaline sparks the overwhelming production of new adrenaline, sending her heart racing and her muscles shaking, and on instinct, she squeezes her eyes shut.

“7…6…5…”

Koschei reaches out and pulls her close, and she opens her eyes again, reminded of the need to perform.

“4…3…2…”

His hands settle on the sides of her face, and he subtly presses his fingers against her ears. Sound disappears. It’s a magic trick again — doing one thing beneath the guise of something else, protection and empathy hidden beneath a veil of physical intimacy.

With the outside sound dimmed, Theta is left with only the rush of blood in her head and the frantic pulsing of her own heartbeat. She focuses on Koschei and only Koschei — the touch, the fire, the desperate hope that this year is the last year. She fights to forget her pain, to blot out everything else and stay here, where she’s needed.

The start, the explosion, and the first canon pass by completely unheard, and the 68th Annual Hunger Games finally begins.


	37. Chapter 37

It’s a terribly long time before Koschei steps back and lets his hands fall away, allowing sound to once again descend upon Theta’s ears. The room is quiet — painfully, agonizingly so — and she does not dare to look up at the screens, does not dare to gaze upon the inevitable carnage that always litters the scene at the Cornucopia, does not dare to tempt fate until it breaks.   
  
At this early stage, fighting for the supplies that the tributes need to survive often means finding death instead. Her year, she braved it, sneaking in and out with the tools she needed to rig the Arena in her favor, but she will never forget the horrors that unfolded around her, the blood that dampened the soil, the way she squashed her compassion into oblivion for long enough to do what had to be done, the great and terrible relief that she felt whenever she heard another blast of cannon fire and set eyes upon another corpse.  
  
She refuses to experience it again.

Instead, her eyes seek out Koschei’s — anxious, questioning, caught somewhere between extreme hope and utter hopelessness. His own face is schooled to blankness, but he leans in and a whisper falls upon her ear, offering news on Rennette. “She ran.”

“How many gone?”

A terrible question with no good answers.

“Five.”

Her tongue sneaks out to wet her lips. She isn’t sure how to feel. Counting deaths is morbid — especially the deaths of _children_ — but five slaughtered at the start means five less obstacles in Rennette’s way, and five less deaths on her conscience, should she win. Maybe if she takes less lives than Theta or Koschei did, she will emerge more intact than either of them had managed, and should the world be forged anew — should Theta’s sensibilities regarding the memorialization of the Games override Koschei’s — perhaps she will not be forced to be reminded of her trauma as often as they are. She will not have to operate within the very system that condemned her, not be forced to relive the worst days of her life over and over again at the whims of the state and the ruthless culture that its created. Perhaps she will be a better person, in a better place, in a better life.

But there is a long way to go before such hopes become real, and the odds of it happening this year are still slim.

Theta looks over her shoulder, turning her eyes towards the rows of names and the odds beside them. Five names go dark — struck from the record. Rennette’s odds tick slightly up, though they do not instill confidence. 33:1. History has proven that to bet on an eleven year old’s victory is to throw money away, but was Theta permitted to bet, she would have thrown everything she had behind the girl — not because its reasonable to put her faith in her, not because she knows some secret that no one else does, but because the she is clinging to the best possible future.

“You’re thinking,” Koschei comments, idly following her gaze before allowing his eyes to once again settle on her face.

“That’s what they pay us for.” She makes the joke without considering it first, falling back into old patterns of defensiveness, though it lacks its former animosity.

A heartbeat later, she is tempted to apologize for the gaff, to tell him that she spoke without thinking and that, perhaps, such words are inappropriate given the gravity of the current situation and her partner’s own mood, but Koschei doesn’t rise in anger. He simply chuckles, dryly amused. “Is it? I was under the impression that we were being bribed to not think at all.”

A server passes with a tray, and Koschei plucks two glasses of champagne from its surface without hesitation or second thought. He passes one to Theta, and raises his own in turn. The twinkle in his eyes reflects the bubbles in the drink, and in a passing second, Theta feels as though some of the weight has fallen away. The world shifts — the room is no longer so dark, the mood no longer so grim. She can ignore the violent desperation flickering on the screens that surround them and focus solely on the hope that Koschei represents.

Theta embraces that hope, and builds upon his laugh with a small amount of boldness. “To not thinking,” she says by way of a toast, before clinking her glass against his own.

“To not thinking,” Koschei echoes, and she can’t quite tell what sentiment lurks within his voice and behind his eyes.

She intends to drown her glass in one fell swoop, but a stranger clad in a gruesome shade of green claps Koschei on the back an inserts his voice into the fray, breaking the moment.

“If it isn’t the Master. How goes it?”

Liquid fills her nose and she coughs rather ungracefully, burying her mouth and nose in her sleeve. “Sorry,” she says, word torn and strangled and shredded to bits on the distress at the back of her throat.

The apology was unnecessary. Koschei’s attention is already gone from her, and the interrupting man does not bother to cast a single eye in her direction.

“Quite a morning, isn’t it?” Koschei says, tone completely divorced from the amusement that he directed at her mere moments ago. His eyes scan the stranger, skating across pale skin and gray hair and round features and the general disgustingness of his presence to a degree that Theta does not bother with. She merely watches Koschei, absorbs his habits, learns the peculiar behaviors that have kept his intentions veiled for so long, that protected him enough to doom him to a sentence of arranged marriage than a public execution. “You’re looking well.”

“Quite a morning, indeed,” the stranger echoes, seemingly unable to contrive words of his own. “Saw you had another runner, eh? What’s that, seven in a row for you?”

Theta bristles, and it requires every fiber of her will to refrain from lashing out and defending Rennette’s decision to avoid the bloodbath in the Cornucopia.

“You know how it is,” Koschei comments after wetting his mouth and his throat with a small sip of his champagne. “Statistics say that the smaller and younger tributes always have a better chance if they stay out of direct combat until everyone is exhausted, and this year, I believe our tribute is the smallest.” It’s spoken with a slight air of presumed uncertainty, though the sharpness in his eyes begs for that the other man dare to challenge an obvious fact.

“Shame about the other, isn’t it? Probably had a better shot, but —“ Darting hands and arms wrapped in green sleeves mime the sudden clap of a fall.

Enraged, Theta tips her glass to the sky and finishes its contents and drawing on its courage. It doesn’t help. It only succeeds in leading the stranger’s attention to her.

“So your his wife now, are you?” the man drawls, flicking a bored and lazy gaze over her.

Theta’s nose wrinkles. “Fiancée, actually. Kind of you to notice.”

Koschei neither interrupts nor attempts to wrest control of the situation, he simply waits and watches, gaze flicking between the two people expectantly. Theta wonders if he’s curious — gauging her response to the situation and applying it to whatever undivulged plans lurk in the future, trying to figure out whether or not she’s an asset or a liability. For all the lip service that he pays to her value, if he didn’t still carry some uncertainty as to her behavior or her loyalties, he would have surely shared more information with her by now. She doesn’t like it, but she can make peace with it. She can fight to earn his regards in the moment in which her pain subsides enough for her to act and think without threatening to fall to pieces and shatter across the delicate marble of the floor.

“Never thought he was the marrying kind.”

“Is anyone the marrying kind?” Theta asks, digging in a little deeper, pushing a little harder, but maintaining a certain sharp playfulness that keeps her from being perceived as a threat. “If left to their own devices, surely people would rather run about without worry about commitment and building a family, but there’s a bit of pressure, isn’t there? Ask when someone’s going to settle down enough times, and eventually, they accept that they probably have to.”

In the strictest sense, her words aren’t true. In the Capitol and the Districts alike, marriage is often a question of business. You marry up to have food and money and privileges. You marry to get out of your parents’ house so that they are no longer obligated to feed you. You marry because it makes sense. The only reason Koschei had not married, she expects, is because he’s at his most valuable as a bachelor. A single victor can charm the masses, can lure them in beneath the charming specter of availability, the vague hope that one day, he might settle for someone like them. It’s one of the many tools in his arsenal, and not one he borrowed from her.

Theta did not marry because she shrugged off as many expectations as possible. It was a tiny expression of rebellion in a long line of them. It frustrated officials, made her difficult to exploit and harder to pin down, secured her a degree of freedom that did not otherwise exist. If lives weren’t on the line, she would not have accepted the engagement to Koschei. It is ironic, in retrospect, that genuinely liking him — not the Master, not the celebrity, not the darling of the Capitol, but the broken, bruised, angry man who lurks beneath — is an act of rebellion in and of itself. The President, in his own words, expect her to frustrate him, expected Koschei to spend the rest of his life locked in close quarters with a person he lusts after but can never have, and in falling, she thwarted that.

The stranger sniffs. “Dunno about that. Never been a marriage guy myself. Prefer not having a partner to spend all my money on finery and food.”

Koschei steps forward, not to save Theta, not to intervene, but merely because he has a part to play. Theta understands that in a way that she didn’t in previous years, knows how vital it is for him to spout his lines at the appropriate time, knows that when the mask is on in a setting like this, it’s no longer personal. “Come now, you have money to spare, don’t you? Always have. I can list a dozen absurd things you purchased in the past year, and those are only the ones I’ve heard about.”

A throaty guffaw fills the air, and instinctively, Theta takes a tiny step backward, eyes narrowed. She does not trust the joy of the ruthless and bloodthirsty. They find joy in horrors. The very existence of the Games stands in testament to that.

“Don’t tell me this is some play to get me to sponsor your girl, Koschei.”

Theta sets her empty glass on a serving tray as it dances by and grabs a replacement. “Would you be here if you weren’t interested?” she asks, leaning in ever so slightly, tilting her head and lifting her eyebrows in a tangible challenge. 

Koschei’s gaze flits to her — lips settling in something that vaguely resembles pride — before turning his own attention back to the man who made himself their prey. “What a stellar question. I was wondering the same thing myself. You don’t tap a partner on the shoulder if you aren’t looking to dance. Show us your moves, Belleville, I’m sure they’re worth our time.”

The stranger, Belleville, snorts, the derisive grunt of a man who’s been caught. “Not now. She’ll have to prove herself first, but, perhaps, if you came by once she’s gotten her hands dirty, we can have a chat about price.” His eyes — beady and hungry — linger inappropriately on both victors, cataloguing and commodifying, reducing them to pawns and coins and bargains.

Theta’s tongue digs into the back of her teeth as she fights to hold back the dozens of comments and arguments raging in her mind, but she can’t jeopardize the relationships with the very people that are Rennette’s only tether to tangible help and assistance. These people, horrid as they are, are key to winning the Games. A pot of medicine, a bit of water, and a hunk of bread all draw the line between life and death, and these people are the only people who can provide them.

The rules ban mentors from sending resources to their own tributes. They can only bargain, campaign, and hope for the best.

“You know where to find us,” Koschei says smoothly. He steps between Theta and Belleville, silently closing the door and declaring the conversation over for the time being. Positions have been made clear, and further bandied words have no further use unless money and power exchange hands. Foolishly and stupidly, Theta hopes that the man does not change his mind and departs from their company permanently, but realistically, she knows that there are no good people in these walls, that every single shark circling these waters is selfish and intolerable and out for blood. It makes her stomach turn and sets a deep chill into the swirling eddies of her bloodstream.

“I don’t like him,” she says quietly once the stranger traipses out of earshot.

“You don’t have to like him,” Koschei replies, taking another measured sip from his glass. “But that doesn’t mean that we don’t need him.”

Her mind wanders back to that first night when they dared to brave a party as a couple, the night that Koschei offered her a distraction and jumped to the stage to perform magic tricks for a rapt crowd. “Shame people don’t pay for magic shows at something like this. You could turn a pretty penny that way.”

“This crowd? Never. Only the young and besotted care the tiniest whit about those, and even their eyes and ears aren’t attending for the magic. Not really. They’ll listen to whatever I say and watch whatever I do.”

Several weeks ago, she would have found the claim grating, would have thrown the remaining contents of her drink in his face and dared him to behave like a person, but it no longer bothers her. It’s true. No matter how much she resents his power and some of the ways in which he uses it, people do listen when he speaks. They watch him intently, and they beg for him to turn his eyes to them in turn, thriving on even the most passing and incidental moments of contact.

“Then why learn it at all?”

As soon as he answers, she feels incredibly stupid for asking such an obvious question.

“Sleight of hand is a useful skill with dozens of applications. I won’t apologize for knowing it.”

A slight flush creeps across her skin and she turns her eyes away, embarrassed that she hadn’t bothered to think beyond the magic and into its mechanics. She is smarter than this, better than letting her tongue and emotions and reckless impulsivity run away with her sense, however, she keeps falling victim to her own sabotage, keeps losing track of the board and the players on it and the skills required to play. For all the years that she spent lurking on the distorted fringes of Koschei’s company, for all the time that she’s spent huddled in this room, surrounded by Games and important people but refusing to engage with them, she needs a manual to catch back up.

Shame no one’s bothered to write one. In the Capitol, it is sink or swim, and she is very, very aware that it is only luck, Koschei’s intervention, and her natural charisma that’s kept her afloat for this long.

She flounders, offering up a half-considered apology. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He finishes his drink in a smooth flourish that punctuates the ease of the dismissal, and abandons it on the nearest surface before taking a step forward, not to be intimate, but to lower his voice even further, minimizing the risk of being overheard. “Who do you want to talk to?”

She casts an eye about the room, stripping each member down to the most surface-level observations. She doesn’t like anyone who’s dressed loudly, doesn’t like anyone who is leaning towards the screens with excitement, doesn’t like anyone who regards the people around them like buzzing flies. It whittles her options down to absolutely no one of any use to them, only the other mentors and victors who are striving to accomplish their same goals.

Thankfully, however, she doesn’t have to provide an answer.

They are interrupted again, but this time, by a teenager with a letter gripped tightly in his hands. His face is flushedwith an effort that speaks to a long run to get here, and he pants between every word as he says. “Mr. Oakdown, this is for you.”

The letter is not red. Rather, it is a pale blue, and bears both Theta and Koschei’s names in a flamboyantly penned silver letters, full of needless swirls and performative flourishes.

Theta rolls her eyes skyward. “I’m here, too, thanks.”   
  
As much as she doesn’t care for being the center of attention, she hates being an afterthought just as deeply. She did not fight and suffer and rage for the right to be forgotten and cast aside, and the fact that it has happened twice in a row cuts her to the bone. It robs her of what little confidence she managed to pull beneath her following her near-breakdown as she acclimated to the room and struggled to come to terms with the formal start of the Games.

“Yes, ma’m. Sorry ma’am.” Despite the labored breathing, the words bump up against each other — nervous, frantic, desperate.   
  
Immediately, regret floods Theta's lungs. She shouldn’t’ve taken her rage out on a child who was probably just doing what he was asked to do under penalty of punishment should he happen to fail. That is terribly unfair of her, and it is only the tug of her curiosity as Koschei opens the letter that keeps her from spewing those regrets into the air between them. She folds her hands behind her back and leans over, eyes squinting as she scans the lines of the message.

_Dearest Theta and Koschei,_

_Since the events of yesterday cut us short, I would be much obliged if you would stop by the studio sometime today for a light discussion! I did promise the viewers that they would get more time with you two, and I daresay that we may have quite the tiff on our hands if we don’t follow through._

_Come over when convenient. The messenger will escort you!_

_Fondest Regards,_

_Caesar_

Worry sets Theta’s heart thudding, and she glances up at Koschei. “He can’t be serious.” She forgets the ears of the teenager that hovers nervously in front of them, awaiting their reactions and decision, and speaks just as plainly as she would have if they were tucked away in a private room.

Koschei, however, does not forget. “Would you please excuse us?” he asks, though he does not wait for permission before taking Theta’s arm and guiding her just far enough away that their words might be obscured by the noise of the ongoing broadcast and the ubiquitous murmur of the crowd.

“We can’t leave Rennette unprotected. One of us has to be here in case something happens,” Theta continues, ticking off excuses on her fingers. “It’s ridiculous. He’s ridiculous. Thinking about us in a time like this. We have post. We have a job. We can’t —“

“We can’t say no,” Koschei interrupts, eyes sweeping over her with a degree of precision that ties her tongue for a brief moment.

It takes her a moment to unknot it, but when she does, she soldiers on, “Of course we can. We agreed to _yesterday_. He can’t hold that over us _today_. Not while things are the way they are.”

“Telling him no makes us look suspicious. It makes it seem like we have something to hide.”

She pivots, actively compromising. “Then send one of us! Then he’s happy and sponsorships are covered.”

“I am not so blind as to think that the President did not have a hand in this. He did demand a performance from us, and we never gave it.”

Theta notices that Koschei dances around the word _kiss_ , but she does not dwell on it. There are more pressing matters demanding her words and attention and fury. “We gave him one. More than one, technically.”

“Not publicly.”

Impulse and fire and discontent spur her to action. She shakes her arm free of his hand, settles a guiding touch on his chin, and draws him close to her. It’s not a particularly passionate kiss, rather, it’s a kiss that serves a purpose. It’s calculated. Smooth enough to seem casual, but deep enough to draw eyes and elicit smirks and whispers from the people around them, and even though she knows that he is aware that she is manipulating both him and the situation, she can feel him fall into it. His hands settle on her waist and a thankless, all-consuming hunger mirrors her movements. She draws back a moment later.

“Now we did,” she declares, casting an eye about the audience that surrounds them. As people catch her eye, they turn away — burying themselves in drinks or screens or conversation with the person next to them, pretending that no one was watching. “And someone will tell him about it, if he’s not already watching.”

There’s a crack in Koschei’s mask, spilling forth a vulnerability that makes her distinctly uncomfortable and profoundly aware that to kiss him in that way is to use him for her own ends. She squashes the thought. She accepted that he must play the diplomatic games that run this society, surely he can accept the same from her. No — he _needs_ to accept the same from her. He can’t demand that she help him and then condemn her for doing so in the same moment. It is counterproductive and cruel and controlling, and she won’t abide any such things. Not while things are already difficult. Not when she already had to overcome so many obstacles in order to not only see the best in him but accept his love and try to offer her own in return.

In that single thought, she feels suddenly overwhelmed — suddenly acutely aware of how intimate the moment is, how deep the emotions run within it — and in response, she falls back on her deepest instinct — _run away_.

“I’ll go,” she says impulsively, taking a step back and running a hand through her hair, pushing back the stray pieces that cling to her forehead and sweep across her cheekbones.

As impulsive as the thought is, it makes more and more sense as she digs deeper and deeper into it. She is ill-suited for this place and the activities in it. After all, even when pressed, she couldn’t even manage to spot a single potential donor that she might be willing to talk to. But Koschei knows this place, knows these people, knows the ins and outs of striking deals and negotiating a tribute out of whatever corners they get backed into. He is more useful here than she is, and for all her discomfort, she performed well beneath the pressure of their last interview. She doesn’t even have to pretend to be in love anymore. She can use what she’s learned, fill a role that feels better and clearer than the one that exists here.

Koschei raises an eyebrow. “Alone?”

“I’m not helpful here,” Theta explains, gesturing vaguely at the people that surround them.

As if to punctuate the point, a pained cry and a desperate gasp resonate through the speakers, speaking to whatever horror is currently dominating the broadcast. Koschei’s eyes dart sideways, gauging the veracity of the threat and Theta’s ability to withstand it, but Theta barely even blinks. Her mind is focused on the task at hand and not free to wander to worst case scenario. “It’ll give me something to think about. Something to do. I can help there, Koschei. You asked me to trust you. Now it’s your turn to trust me, yeah?”

Koschei hesitates, and a heavy sigh falls from his lips. “What if he asks you to commentate?”

Theta shakes her head. “I don’t think he will.”

“But what if he does?”

The current of the conversation has shifted. Theta’s no longer the one stubbornly digging her heels in and being dragged along. She’s leading, looking out for their best interests and demanding that he listen to her, and it feels better than being blinded, better than letting him block the sound of the Games from her ears, better than cowering away.

“Then I’ll distract him. He’s afraid of me. I can think of something to talk about, and he won’t question it, and besides, he wants the interview he didn’t get. He wants to talk about us, Koschei. Screw the rest of it.” She pauses, thought perched on the tip of her tongue. “I don’t need your permission, you know.”

Koschei draws a sharp breath, straightening his shoulders slightly. “It’s not about permission. I don’t want you to be compromised, love. I don’t want us to be compromised because the worst happened, and a camera was on you.”

“I won’t be,” she insists. “I trust Rennette. She’ll make it through the say. She already hid. All those little spaces? They won’t find her that quickly. Let me do this. Start trusting me.”

Her eyes appeal to his, bright and pleading and on the verge of tears, and for better or for worse, Koschei surrenders to her gravity.

“Fine.” There’s a beat of silence before a thought occurs to him, and he pats his pockets, seeking out some unseen object. Confusion scribes itself across Theta’s face, holding the love and worry at bay for a moment.

He finds the right pocket in a matter of seconds, reaching in and emerging with a small, velvet-coated box in his fingers. “This is for you.”

“What is it?” she asks hesitantly. Her mind cycles back to the moment in his home, when he tossed her the ring and condescendingly called it a _directive_.

“A promise, and a bit of help.”

Her hand shakes slightly as she reaches out and takes the box from him. Nervously, she turns it over in her hands before daring to open it, running the pads of her fingers over the soft surface. He takes a step closer, and she can feel his breath against her face, smell the peppermint in the air, mixed with alcohol.

After a moment, she pops it open. It’s a key. Small, silver, simple, kept on a chain. She touches it with the edge of her thumb, and almost drops it when she connects not with cold metal, but an object that seems to radiate heat. “It’s warm,” she says, surprised.

“There’s a battery in it. I’m sure you understand how it works better than I do. I had it made when I realized that touch was helpful in keeping you here. Thought it might help to have something to focus on if there was a point when I couldn’t be there to help.”

He’s even closer now, his forehead gently resting against hers as she stares down at the gift.

It takes her a moment to find thoughts and words. It’s been a long time since someone gave her a meaningful gift, nonetheless something that took her needs into account and sought to help her work through them. “Thank you,” she says, though it doesn’t feel like enough.

“I can help you put it on,” he suggests, and she nods.

He is precise and careful as he takes it in his fingers and steps behind her, and Theta tucks the pendant beneath her jacket and her shirt, allowing it to rest as close to her heart as possible. Already, she feels less like she’s walking into the unknown. The heat is a constant reminder, a constant point of contact, a constant chorus of ‘ _you are not alone_.’ It’s an arm warding off nightmares in the dark, and the support of a touch in a moment when she’s spiraling into her own history, and a hand extended to help her to her feet.

She considers bundling up that warmth, translating it into a three word phrase that she almost dared to speak last night before Rennette interrupted it, but it doesn’t feel like the right time. So she turns to humor — masking, intercepting, obfuscating. “I won’t even mention raccoons.”

She expects to see disappointment on his face, but there isn’t any. Perhaps he has finally accepted that this will happen at its own pace and that he can’t force it along. Or, perhaps, he simply likes this part of her as much as any other.

“I thought you were on squirrels now.”

Theta smiles, and then turns to tell the messenger boy that she’s going to accompany him back to the studio.


	38. Chapter 38

Activity bustles around Theta. Even though the broadcast of the actual Hunger Games demands a smaller quantity of people than does the pageantry of the interviews, the building is just as lively. Well over a dozen people dash between rooms as she’s led down first one hallway and then another — all holding notes and lists and barking into headsets. One would think that the process would be more tightly refined by now — efficient in the same way that the betting tables are efficient — but perhaps this is just the Flickerman brand — chaos and color and the ceaseless demand for attention.

Or, perhaps, this is simply what happens when things deviate from the established plan, when an entire staff is forced to reshuffle programming and deal with the last minute changes caused by the unscheduled murder of a tribute on the primary stage in front of a live audience. Thankfully, they won’t conduct Theta’s interview on that same stage. She posed that question that as soon as she walked in, and she was duly informed that when there is no audience, the broadcast happens in smaller rooms. It means that she won’t have to confront the fact that things are already being staged on hallowed ground, that the blood’s been mopped up and the bodies shoved aside, and no one has any second thoughts about the cost of stepping in a certain place, even though she knows that they would anyway. Killing tributes before the Games is both shocking and against the rules, but no one here bothers to mourn for the loss of someone who was already labelled as disposable. Not when there’s money to be made elsewhere, not when you have to highlight and present the violence happening in the Arena at this very moment.

Theta has already been asked three times why Koschei is not with her, and each time, she provides the most diplomatic answer possible: “He has a job to do, so I came to represent both of us.” No one seems very receptive to the concept, but they also don’t demand that she call him or grind the chaos to a halt until he deigns to show his face. They simply make a note or bark a set of instructions at another assistant and shuffle her down the line.

At some point, her hair and make-up is touched up, and she starts to resent the fact that she’s not in Amy’s capable hands. With Amy, there’s a certain degree of comfort and familiarity in the practice. She can relax into Amy’s touch and talk to her heart’s content and know that her friend will listen. With strangers, however, the relationship is fundamentally antagonistic. They don’t trust each other. They don’t know each other. There’s just a job in need of doing and a long history that suggests that Theta might devolve into shouting at any given moment.

Eventually, she’s shoved through a doorway and told to stand in the wings until she hears her name. Vaguely, she’s reminded of the first hours spent within the Capitol this year, when Koschei paved the way for her to find enough comfort on the stage to lie, when he knew that she despised him and still took the time to reassure her and provide cover, and when she thought he was just saving his own skin.

Theta’s hand rises to the place where the warmth of the key seeps into her skin, focusing on it and it alone, chasing the rest of the world and its worries away.

Someone counts down.

Caesar welcomes back the viewers with a flourish and a string of words that sound like gibberish against Theta’s ears. Her brain doesn’t bother sorting through the mess in search of specifics, it’s listening for one thing and one thing only — her name. It takes so long for him to speak it that she starts to genuinely worry that she missed it, that beyond the privacy of her hiding space, people are awkwardly covering for her failure to appear, making jokes at her expense and buying time while they figure out what happened.

But a moment later, it finally crashes down around her ears. “Miss Theta Lungbarrow, everybody!”

She doesn’t have time to breathe a sigh of relief. She simply moves her feet and the rest of her body follows. Stepping into the limelight is always a surreal experience. In her youth, it made her defensive and aggressive. At Koschei’s side, it made her uncomfortable. Now, it is a necessary evil, something to be weathered and harnessed and controlled to her own ends. She has done far more unbearable things for far less reward. Rennette’s life is on the line, as is Koschei’s. In this interview, she is selling both an engagement and a tribute, and the warmth of the key reminds her that she has support and faith and _hope_. Hope in a better world, hope in other people, and hope in herself.

“Morning, Caesar.” The greeting flows automatically, and she extends a hand for him to shake, serving up a bright smile to both the host and the waiting cameras. Despite her best intentions and her desire to remain present, her mind drifts to Koschei, left behind in the betting rooms, anxiously wishing for the best possible outcome, rendered completely powerless by location and distance.

Caesar —draped entirely in a dark red that speaks of blood — takes her proffered hand, and Theta watches the fear that lurked in his gaze during their last meeting abate slightly. Koschei’s been bargaining for good will on her behalf — both directly and indirectly — and, apparently, it has been working.

“It’s been only a couple weeks since you were last on our show — your first media appearance in five years, was it? — yet I think I speak for all of us when I say that it feels like it’s been an entire decade.” The words are followed by a quiet roll of laughter, and though Theta serves up a smile in return, she can’t quite find it in herself to echo the sound.

She weighs her answer on the tip of her tongue as she presses it into the back of her teeth. She doesn’t think of what Koschei would say, doesn’t try to emulate, rather, she tries to be a more refined version of herself. “Time moves differently in between the reaping and the start of the Games, Caesar. I think we all know that.” A hand gestures to the cameras, indicating the people beyond.

Though she does not often deign to speak on behalf of the world, she genuinely believes that it’s a completely true thought. For her, time moves more slowly due to her own fear. For the Capitol denizens, they find themselves wrapped up in anticipation. For those who occupy the districts, there’s a numbing horror in being forced to work beneath the sights and sounds of stolen children. It all distorts time, creates a tear in the fabric of the universe, and everyone, no matter who they are, is painfully aware of it.

“Well, it’s certainly my busiest time of year,” Caesar answers with a bright grin towards those same cameras, adjusting the lay of his jacket slightly as he leans back in his chair and crosses his legs, resting an ankle on his knee.

Theta tilts her head, eyes bright and alert as she waits for Caesar to steer the conversation in the intended direction. Historically, she’s lead these little interviews, twisting them towards aggression and her own outspokenness — alienating person after person — but she’s here for Koschei. She’s here to buy time. She’s here to put on a good face to the public. She’s here to see if she can slip in a couple words that will help Rennette.

Caesar continues, “I think you know that we’ve all been buzzing about your recent engagement, and it’s such a shame that your fiancé could not join us here today. I don’t think I’ve made any secret about how excited I am for the two of you. It’s been so long since we’ve had this kind of connection between two victors! Tell me, Theta, is it difficult to work so closely with Koschei given your relationship? Or is it old hat by now?”

It is not the question that she was expecting, but she does not allow herself to panic. She braces her hand on her hip, turning her eyes towards the sky as a puff of pent-up breath fills her cheeks. For all the talking that she does, it’s difficult to find the right words quickly. Maybe she’s overthinking this. Maybe she needs to let go and let her instincts take over. After all, Koschei said that she glowed even when she didn’t mean to.

“We definitely spend more time talking about each other than we did before. There were whole years when we managed to slip under the radar. Well,” she quirks her head sideways, nose wrinkling as she reconsiders the thought. “I managed to slip under the radar. Koschei never really does that, does he?”

“Speaking personally, I’ve _always_ been a fan of our Koschei, and I’m not the only one.” Caesar winks at the camera, and Theta’s eyes dart to follow his gaze. “But how surprised were we when we found out you were among our ranks? It’s no secret that you two used to have a _contentious_ dynamic.”

“As I remember, I had a contentious dynamic with everyone. Didn’t you and I once come terribly close to blows?” She didn’t intend to drag Caesar into this, to hold him equally accountable for the fight that they had all those years ago, but instincts are driving. Her eyes glitter and the faintest hint of a mischievous smile tugs at one side of her mouth.

The question catches Caesar off-guard, and Theta sees the faintest flicker of doubt pass beneath the impenetrable and near-unmoving mask forged through repeated plastic surgeries. But the doubt vanishes beneath the demands of his position. He is not in a position to share his truth, because starting another fight with her would mean that she will not provide him with the gossip she needs.

“I suppose we did,” he concedes after a split-second’s pause. “I must say, it’s a relief that we seem to have moved passed that little snafu.” There’s a waving of words and a waving of his free hand — uncertain and indecisive and more than ready to trudge onward. “But anyway — you, Koschei, who fell in love first?”

With a sigh of relief, Theta falls into the truth. “He did, actually.”

“Really?” A brightly-colored eyebrow rises, or rather, tries to rise and butts up against an invisible obstacle. “I don’t think any of us would’ve seen that coming.”

She steals herself with a deep breath. She doesn’t want to be honest — not to someone who has not earned her honesty — but she has a job to do. Instead of focusing on Caesar, she thinks about Koschei — attentive and listening and hanging on every detail — and speaks directly to him. “He’s a person who knows what he wants, and to be quite frank, I’ve never managed to make heads nor tails of what I wanted. I never thought about those things — marriage, futures, families — and he slowed me down and cleared my mind enough that, for the first time, I started to wonder.”

“Families?” Caesar latches onto the one thing that Theta would prefer not to elaborate on with single-minded intensity. “Are you two thinking about children, then? Or is there…” he trails off, but the implication is evident in the dash of eyes towards her stomach.

Worry rises. She doesn’t want children. She doesn’t ever want children. Not after all that she’s seen and all that she’s done, but she can’t tell him that. “I think people can find family in each other. They _have_ to, sometimes. I didn’t have one, so I had to find my own.”

“Putting children before the wedding would be placing the cart before the horse a bit, wouldn’t it?” Caesar acknowledges with a knowing smile.

Theta hates that smile. For all the brutal honesty with which she’s attacked him over the years, he doesn’t know anything about her, and how dare he be so presumptive as to assume that he does?

Her hand curls into a fist — the curved points of her fingernails driving tiny bruises into her palm — but she hides it away within the confines of a pocket and veils her anger beneath a tight smile. “I’ve had more than enough scandals on my hands over the years. People might riot if I added another. They’d have to start keeping little lists to pull out as a reference during dinner conversation.”

Caesar laughs, and she’s not quite sure if it’s genuine. Not that it really matters. She’s not here to win over the un-winnable; her real audience lurks somewhere beyond this room.

“I’ve heard that one of my assistants has a flowchart,” he says once the laughter has finally subsided.

“Do they? Is it helpful? I might need one when my mind starts to go.” She’s following the current, letting her tongue lead and her mind follow.

“Hopefully you have many glorious years ahead of you before that happens, and speaking of glorious, have you and Koschei set a date yet?”

“A date for what?”

“For the wedding, of course! Everyone wants to know. It’ll be the event of the year. It will be this year, won’t it?”

He leans forward. A camera pulls closer.

An idea occurs to her, spoken in an echo of Koschei’s voice, and for the first time in this interview, she deliberately and purposefully does what he would have done. “It depends on the outcome of the Games, doesn’t it?” she says, planting the idea and letting allowing it to grow in silence for a moment as Caesar attempts to parse its implications. 

“Does it? Do explain.”

“I imagine,” Theta says delicately, speaking in the same careful, calculated tones that Koschei uses whenever he retreats behind the mask, “that it would be difficult for us to fully embrace the pageantry of a wedding while licking our wounds in the throes of defeat, but if, by chance, our tribute was to win the Games, things could go a bit more quickly.”

She doesn’t know for sure whether planting the idea that Rennette’s victory could hasten the arrival of a wedding will help Koschei solicit donations, but she doesn’t see how it could possibly _hurt_ their cause. The elite population of the Capitol love an extravagant celebration and the social clout of being invited to an exclusive event, and she does not doubt that the marriage ceremony between two victors — especially when one of them is _the Master_ — would tick both of those boxes. In their excitement, they would surely be incentivized to help move things along. And even better yet, committing to so openly to a possibly near-imminent ceremony acts as a performative offering to the President, a small concession to his endlessly cruel demands. 

Between the two of them, Koschei is by far the more gifted social engineer, but Theta can sometimes stumble onto the correct path, especially after days and weeks of exposure to Koschei, watching and cataloging the minute differences between his true nature and the persona, digging to the bottom of what makes it successful and why.

He borrowed things from her, or so he claims. She can borrow this from him, too. Their strengths each offset the others, compensating for their many weaknesses. 

“ _Oh_!” Caesar says, eyes alight, genuine excitement flirting with the perpetually genial set of his mouth. “How quickly?”

A feigned shrug lifts Theta’s shoulders. “However quickly Koschei is comfortable with, I guess. He’s much more of a planner than I am.”

She is purposefully leaving the door open, and in a way, she’s sorry for it. She knows that hundreds of eyes have just turned to Koschei, that he will face a barrage of questions regarding a wedding that does not yet exist, but she also knows that he is fully prepared to weather that storm. He has twisted the spotlight to his own ends for years, and with luck, he will understand what she is attempting to do and play into it.

Maybe, just maybe, instead of being frustrated at her insistence on going rogue, he’ll be proud of her.

Maybe he'll be proud enough to tell her the details of his grand design, even.  
  
Theta can only hope for the best. She can't be expected to fly blind for much longer, otherwise she's no better than the shockingly dressed man who sits across from her now. Despite her shortcomings and the demons that plague her, she deserves to be an active player and not a pawn, and if Koschei will not grant her that regard, then she will demand it over and over again until he concedes.   
  
If she can be trusted with the public stage, she can be trusted with private schemes, and if he really loves her, he will _finally_ let her in.   
  
The time for excuses is over.   
  
This is war, and they need to be a united front. Otherwise, they are doomed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested, I have a twitter now! My handle is fictionpenned, same as here.


	39. Chapter 39

Theta is careful when she returns to the betting rooms. She wordlessly nods to the attendants who open the doors at her approach, and slips between members of the crowd with the intention of creating as few waves as possible. She dodges eye contact and meets utterances of congratulations and offers for conversation with a series of quick and quiet ‘ _not nows_.’ She wants to speak to Koschei before she dares to engage with the public further, wants to make sure he is at peace with the path that she’s created for them, wants to make sure that they have time to get their stories straight.

It takes her a minute to find him. He’s all the way at the back, leaning against a counter with one hand on his hip, talking animatedly to a person that Theta could swear she’s never seen before.

“I’m back,” she says as she sidles up to his side, keeping her eyes fixed on the stranger just in case they turn out to be a threat.

Koschei flinches. It’s not a huge motion — not a jump or a hop or anything born of horror — but it is noticeable, and Theta quickly apologizes, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you. Not normally good at it, the sneaking around thing, I mean.” Her nerves bleed through every word as her thoughts blend together into an unfocused mass.

He’ll know what she means, though, he always does.

“Do you mind?” he says, inclining his head to the stranger across from him.

“Not at all,” the stranger replies with a dryness that suggests that the request is, in fact, mildly inconvenient.

Theta’s gaze moves to Koschei as soon as the stranger turns their back, eyes darting about as they desperately search out whatever thoughts lie behind his mask. He’s not completely blank, but not completely readable either, and it leaves her with a question that sends her stomach sinking towards her toes.

“Did you see it?”

The corner of his lip creeps upward. “I did.”

“And?” she asks, leaning into the word as though life and death depend on it.

Koschei straightens, taking his hand off the counter in order to swipe a drink from its attendant. He downs its contents in a single gulp before taking a step towards her, eyes bright. The scant distance between them is alight with an electricity that sets her heart pounding and raises goosebumps on her arms, and he speaks a perilously quiet whisper straight onto her lips, lined with peppermint and champagne.

“I’m going to do something incredibly stupid for the benefit of our audience here,” he says. His eyes leave her face for only a moment, darting over her shoulder to stare at the room behind her before floating back.

Theta’s tongue wets her lips. “What?”

He tracks the movement with single-minded intensity.

“Do you trust me to catch you?” he asks after a thoughtful breath. It’s deliberately cryptic, and frustration buzzes at the front of Theta’s mind, a gnat that never seems to take the hint and go bother somebody else.

“What?” she repeats, not understanding.

“Do you trust me to catch you?” he repeats, doubling down instead of offering more information.

“I hate surprises,” she murmurs under her breath.

Koschei tilts his head and raises an eyebrow, enormously skeptical of the claim, however, he says nothing, waiting only for a yes or a no.

Eventually, she inhales sharply through her nose and exhales a begrudging, “Yes.”

His hands are on her in an instant, and the world turns upside down and sideways. Reflexively, one of her feet leaves the ground, compensating for a bend that she’s entirely incapable of. There’s a word of worry on her tongue, but it never quite manages to fully form, and leaves her only as a concerned squeal. He catches it on his own lips, muffling it, cutting it short.

It takes her a minute to accept it, to settle in and close her eyes and melt fully into his touch and his support and the sudden, unexpected intimacy of the kiss. The room goes quiet — and she’s not entirely sure whether it’s because her senses have ceased to function or because a hundred eyes have just turned to them. She doesn’t dare consider it for too long. It would only sow doubt, and she can’t afford to carry any more of that at the moment.

When Koschei’s lips finally leave hers, she eases her eyes open, watching him curiously. He lingers, watching her, thinking thoughts that are tightly kept away beneath lock and key, eyes flicking from her lips to her gaze to the distracting glitter spread across her cheeks — a haphazard constellation of tiny, shimmering stars.

After half an age of pensive silence, he draws her back upward, allowing her a moment to find her feet and her balance again before his touch falls away, fingers whispering down her arms until he clasps her hands in his, intertwining their fingers.

Applause sounds somewhere at the edges of her awareness, but Theta barely hears it.

“Wasn’t so bad, was it?” Koschei says in words meant only for Theta’s ears.

“Horrible,” she quips back, but the smile that flirts with the corners of her mouth and crinkles the corners of her eyes gives the truth away.

“Glad to hear it.” He, too, is joking, and Theta _likes_ it. She likes these stolen moments, likes the laughs and the comforts and the little touches that spark joy and _mean_ something. She likes it more than any talk of the future, any promises of power, any grand gestures meant to soothe a soul-sucking public. It feels more intimate than the kiss, less performative, more genuine, and she catches herself desperately wishing for a peaceful future in which there is nothing but joy and laughter and the earnestness of two people who spent an eternity pining for companionship and finally found it.

However, that future lies on the other side of a seemingly unscalable mountain, and the sound of a scream brings her crashing back down to the terror of the world and their place within it.

Against her better judgement, she casts a gaze over her shoulder, seeking out the source of the noise. It’s not Rennette, she knew it from the first moment the sound hit her, but she still finds herself needing to know what’s happening, needing to keep track of it all, needing to count how many barriers lie between the sacrificial lambs of District 3 and real, genuine, tangible _hope_.

Rennette — dirty and wide-eyed and stained in with a splash of someone else’s blood, stands over the crumpled form of another tribute, grasping a rock tightly in her hand. The light is scare, filtering into the space in broken rays from some unseen source, and it casts the scene in dramatic, deathly shadow. Every breath moves and shakes her entire body, fighting against the adrenaline rush that must be coursing through her system. Theta’s heart cries out with sympathy, but she does not look away as Rennette crouches, checking pockets and the fallen boy’s bag. She comes away with a spool of wire and a small knife, which she tucks away into her own pockets.

A cannon sounds, marking the death, and Rennette looks up, locking eyes with the camera, and _grins_ to play her part and hide her pain.

Theta’s breath catches in her chest and her heart seems to stop beating, strangled by fear and pain and memory. It reminds her of that moment of power she held in her hands when she was a tribute, the single moment where she stood at the top of the world before the reality of her actions sent her tumbling in a downward spiral that up until a couple weeks ago, seemed endless. It reminds her of the horrors that will continue to haunt their footsteps, even if Rennette wins. Most of all, it reminds her of Koschei, standing on that podium for crowning and pretending that he was not bruised and broken and torn apart by the system that carried him there.

Water swims in the corners of her eyes, and she detangles one of her hands from his, wiping the tears away before they have a chance to fall.

“Is there…” It takes her a moment to find the request she needs. “Is there somewhere we can go to talk? Not for long. I don’t want to abandon her, I just —“

Every syllable flounders, every thought dies before she has a chance to finish it, however, Koschei listens and understands and nods.

“Ten minutes?” he asks — words careful, tone veiled.

Theta nods.

Keeping a firm hold on her hand, Koschei turns to lead her through the crowd, weaving through people with a smattering of quiet murmurings.

“Your girl!” one man says with a glass raised in a grim mockery of a toast. “Didn’t see that coming.”

Another woman puts a hand on Koschei’s shoulder, nails sinking in like claws as she falls into step at his side. “Have you curated an invite list yet? I would _love_ to find myself a spot.”

A brashly dressed man offers Theta an inappropriate word and a touch on the elbow, both too subtle for Koschei to hear. She wrinkles her nose and hurries onward, clinging as close to Koschei as possible. So close, in fact, that she almost trips over his feet.

“Careful, love,” he casts over his shoulder.

“You try being careful,” she mutters under her breath.

If Koschei hears her, he chooses to keep his comments to himself.

Eventually, they break out of the mass of people and to the edge of the room where the bathrooms lurk. Koschei knocks twice on the door, and when there is no answer, he slides it back and holds it open, waiting for Theta to step past him before following close behind.

He locks it with a click, and presses on it just to make sure they don’t get interrupted.

It’s a large room, broken into several sections. Close to the door, a couch sits upon plush carpet. Further in, sinks and mirrors line both walls, and a step back from that, hidden behind another door, is an unseen toilet. It’s a room designed for covert meetings and touch-ups first, and function second. Koschei circles like a hawk, checking every nook and cranny for bugs and cameras. Theta, on the other hand, sinks onto the couch and waits for him to finish. She doesn’t feel the need to double-check his work. Koschei is fastidious almost to a fault.

A couple minutes later, content that the room is safe, Koschei steps back towards the entryway, shoving his hands into his pockets and leaning against the wall opposite her, expression unreadable. “I wasn’t expecting you to set our wedding date on live television.”

“I’m sorry, I thought it —“

He brushes her apology away with a wave of his hand before it returns to its place in his pocket. “Don’t apologize. It was brilliant. Inspired, even. Bit cold for you, though.”

“Technically, I didn’t set a date. We could still —“

“No.” The sentiment stands firm. “Let’s take it one step further. If Rennette wins, let’s get married at the crowning.”

Worry claws at her heart, scrambling her insides. It wasn’t what she expected him to say. “What? _No_.”

“Why not?” Koschei’s tone is measured, but his stare burns as it cuts through her. She has the distinct sense that she’s being tested, though she doesn’t know whether he’s aiming to gauge the thickness of her skin or the depth of her commitment to him. Either way, she has the distinct impression that she’s doomed to failure, though that could just be her lingering fears for Rennette tainting her worldview.

Theta wets her lips with a nervous swipe of her tongue. “It’s too soon.”

It’s terrible excuse, and she knows it.

Koschei exhales through his nose and drops his gaze to the carpet. “It’s a _legal_ marriage, Theta, not a commitment to do anything you’re not ready to do. Between us, nothing has to change.”

“Why does it need to be then? Why tie it to a ceremony that holds no good memories for either of us? What good does that do anyone?”

Koschei pushes himself off of the wall and crosses the room. Even though there’s room on the couch beside Theta, he sits on the floor at her feet, resting an elbow against his knee and propping his head on a closed fist as he regards her. “What makes magic work, Theta?”

A frown etches itself into the lines of Theta’s face, tugging everything stubbornly downward. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“We’ll get there. Humor me.” It’s less of a request than a demand.

“You force the audience to focus on someone else while you do the trick. You make sure they’re not watching closely enough to see it.” She doubts the words even as she speaks them, feeling like she’s missing something important, that in the next moment she’ll be reprimanded for being wrong.

Instead, Koschei nods once — subtle, mostly unmoving. “If you were going to murder someone, wouldn’t you want them to be juggling as many balls as possible? Focusing on everything except their own security? Overwhelm them with thoughts of victors and weddings and societal obligations until they’re too blind to see the knife slipping between their ribs?” As he speaks, his voice gets gradually lower, descending into a harsh whisper.

It takes Theta a moment to put the pieces together. “You were always going to do this at a victor crowning, weren’t you? That’s why you needed a tribute to win.”

“It gives us direct access to the President, and he would never think that anyone would be so bold as to strike him down at a public event.”

“But isn’t it suspicious? Doesn’t it put everyone’s eyes on you if you’re getting married?” Her mind races, searching for flaws in the idea. It feels off, but she can’t seem to put her finger on exactly why that is.

Amusement curls his lips. “No. It puts everyone’s eyes on _you_.”

“But they _like_ you. They don’t like me.”

“Wedding dresses are extravagant. They take up space. They draw the eye. There’s no point looking at me when they could be looking at you. Plus, with Rennette, their attention will be divided, too.”

“That doesn't seem like enough. Why are you banking on a wedding dress to —“ Theta starts to ask another question, but an insistent knock on the door interrupts them. Koschei springs up, straddling her lap and pressing a finger to her lips, silently insisting that she remain quiet. Time stretches into tense waiting. Theta is enormously conscious of both the warmth and weight of his body on hers and the creeping urge to bite his finger. She’s done it once before. Granted, she liked him a good bit less then, but it’s still horribly, terribly tempting to irk him in these scattered moments when he wrests control.

She fights to ignore the hunger that stirs in her belly at the proximity, focusing on her irritation to the exclusion of all else.

There’s another knock, followed by a long period of silence.

When it seems reasonable to assume that the knocker has given up and taken their leave, Koschei eases himself off of her and resumes his position on the ground.

“That was unnecessary,” Theta observes. “If you shushed me, I would’ve been quiet. I’m not that _stupid_.”

Koschei grins. “But it was a good bit more fun, wasn’t it?”

A creeping flush consumes her face and neck, and she bulldozes past the question, resuming her line of inquiry. “I don’t see how you can guarantee that. There’s too many people, too many variables.”

“Nothing in this world is guaranteed, but I’ve been playing this game for a long time, love. Much longer than you. I’m all-in on this. I believe in it. I’m controlling some of the eyes, that’s why I need the EMP, but the rest of them — we have to trust in the fact that people are predictable. I’m willing to do that, but you have to trust me. Completely. You’re either all in or all out, Theta, which is it going to be?”

She tilts her head towards the ceiling, conscious of his eyes on her and the heavy heat of the key around her neck.  
  
She has the distinct sense that there's something that he's not telling her, but she doesn't know what that might be, or what questions she needs to ask in order to get closer to that hidden truth. 

“And if Rennette loses?” 

“Then we regroup from there.”

After a long series of minutes, Theta breathes out a sigh. “I don’t have a better idea.”

“You’re in, then?” he says, voice edging up towards excitement.

Her eyes fall upon him again, catching his earnest lean forward, the fire in his eyes. “I want a better world, and if this is what it takes, it’s what it takes.”

Koschei smiles, and for a second, Theta swears that it burns brighter than the sun itself.


	40. Chapter 40

By the time Theta and Koschei leave the betting facility, the dark and inhumane hours of the early morning have fallen over the Capitol. The air is oppressively humid, and the neon glow of the lights seems to stick to it — bending and gathering and hovering in artificial illusions of clouds. In a tired, curious, slightly drunk haze, Theta reaches out a hand to try to touch one, but her fingers move through it, feeling nothing but the same damp, hot air that presses against her skin and coats the inside of her lungs.

Plastered on the side of some of the buildings is the very same stream of footage that defined the atmosphere in the betting facility. Once they start, the Games are inescapable. Mandatory viewing is a basic tenet of the system that the President designed in the post-war era. The Games do not succeed at striking fear into the hearts of citizens if they do not taint every aspect of living, if they are not as intense and suffocating as the thick night air that currently threatens to suffocate her.

Theta wavers slightly, missing a step in the sidewalk and catching herself against Koschei.

“Sorry.” Her fingers splay, pressing into his chest as she heaves a great sigh of exhaustion. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she is vaguely aware that she ought to be embarrassed, but shame has passed her by — chased away by the intoxicating mix of alcohol and deepening relationships. For all the doubts that she still carries, for all the disagreement with which she still meets some of his worldviews, Koschei is safer than anything else in this world. She feels like she’s allowed to say stupid things or make mistakes, that she doesn’t have to cocoon herself in a shield of self-sabotage in order to get by.

Koschei’s hands are careful as he helps to steady her, but his expression remains veiled by shadows, dappled light, and his own defenses. “I can still call us a car, love.”

“I’m fine.” Theta presses her tongue between her lips as she concentrates on regaining her balance, and once she’s steady, she flips a stray bit of hair out of her face and glances over at him. “Don’t think I could handle any more questions.”

“It’s a five minute cab ride.” Koschei’s being uncharacteristically short with her, especially when contrasted with their earlier intimacy. Something’s bothering him, and she pretends not to notice. It’s probably just the Games. Or the drunkenness. After all, she didn’t fancy her the last time she was drunk. However she tries not to let it bother her. She’s always been able to chase away his demons in the past, surely she can do it again. _Electric_ , that’s what he called her.

So she lets her mouth run away with her in the vague hope that she’ll stumble her way into genuine charm.

“I always say stupid things in cabs. First time I was in one, I told the driver I wanted to be a doctor. My whole life was suddenly on a ticking timer, and silly old me is still sitting in the back seat with my mouth running about things I knew I’d never do. He still talks about it. Pulls up in front of my house every year and calls me Doc.”

As the words tumble off her tongue, she comes to the creeping realization that not all that much has changed since then. She still cannot seem to stop herself from talking. The heart goes where the heart goes, and the rest of her is powerless as it follows. She keeps trying to impose logic upon her world and then ignoring it as she trudges blindly forward. It is the way things have always been. It is what compelled her to commit all the sins that wound up tying her to Koschei in the first place, what made someone in the upper echelons of the government — presidential or otherwise — look at her pattern of behavior and become utterly convinced that she is the solution for trapping Koschei in an endless cycle of misery. However, whoever paired them failed to consider that Koschei complements her, in his own strange way. His vices balance her own, though the same cannot be said for the distinct lack of good sense that remains evenly split between the two of them.

“I’m not going to start calling you Doc, if that’s your point.” A shiver passes through Koschei as he straightens his shoulders and looks away, barring her from whatever thought sparked the reaction. “Nor do I think you’re likely to ever see a cab driver in the Capitol for a second time.”

In contrast to the Districts, cars here almost seem to outnumber the residents. In District 3, there are three vehicles that roam the dusty, vacant streets, and two of them are owned by the peacekeepers. The other car is the District’s sole cab, called into duty only for important visitors and the Games, and tucked away beneath a ragged tarp for the rest of the year. At least they pay him on scale with the factory workers — not a lot, but enough money by which one might be able to scrape a passable living together. Apparently, promptness and the ability to respond to a call at a moment’s notice are important qualities in a cab driver. One must be able to drop everything.

Theta doesn’t understand that demand.

People have always made her wait, but then again, she’s never been afforded the same regard that is allowed to her peers. The glory promised by victory was always afforded to her in name only. She has the prize money, she has the obligations of press appearances and mentorship and parties, but she is also stigmatized.

She will never be allowed the same celebrity status that is afforded to Koschei.

She is given awe and fear and a certain degree of curiosity, but never love.

It’s why she turned to drinking today. As pain increased, normal conversations and normal judgements grew harder and harder to bear, and she grew to rely upon the artificiality of drunk charm more and more. When she does not spark and dazzle under her own power, the bubbles of champagne help to carry her to the finish line.

As does Koschei, when he’s in a decent mood.

“I don’t want you to call me Doc. I want you to walk with me,” Theta demands, tugging her mind back into the present moment enough to belatedly register his words. “It’s the only time I get to be alone.”

She can hear bitterness sink into his tone as he remarks, “You’re not alone. I’m here, and I do not doubt that we’re being observed by others.” His eyes raise and he does a quick half turn, eyes sweeping for cameras. It’s a useless gesture. The contrast between the projections and the neon lights and the dark shadows of summer nights make it nigh impossible to spot those little things, even for a gaze as practiced as Theta’s.

But Theta knows that identifying cameras is not Koschei’s point. Together, the gesture and the words are a warning, reminding her that she needs to be careful what she says, and, for the most part, she listens.

“You know what I mean. Romana’s in the apartment, half the Capitol was at the betting tables today, this is the only place where I feel like I can think freely.”

“But you like Romana.”

Theta’s nose wrinkles. “That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?” Koschei’s hands withdraw from her as he unbuttons his gleaming, brightly-colored suit jacket, draping it over one arm as he patiently awaits her answer.

Theta shrugs and takes a step forward, but she comes to a stubborn stop once again as she sweeps her hands through the air, searching for answers that she isn’t sure she actually possesses. When she is intoxicated, it’s difficult to walk and talk and move her arms at the same time. “I feel freer when I get to make choices. The less people in the room, the more choices I feel like I have.”

Koschei pivots to face her, a single eyebrow raised. “Choice is an illusion.”

A huff of air puffs Theta’s cheeks. “You make choices all the time. You plot and plan and scheme. Those are all choices. Hard ones, even. Very complicated.”

Her partner takes a step forward, closing the distance between them and lowering his voice to a barely audible whisper. “You can’t talk about that here, Theta.”

Theta refuses to meet his tone or volume in kind, instead choosing to bandy about an intentionally dismissive, “Who said I’m talking about anything? I didn’t say I was talking about anything. You decided that.”

She feels the tension of his fear between them as it enters the already laden air.

“We should go home. It’s safer.”

The tip of Theta’s tongue sits poised against the top of her front teeth, loaded with another retort, but she thinks better of it. She doesn’t have the energy to fight him, and even if she did, this is not the place or time to do so. Their next fight needs space, closed doors, and absolute privacy. She still has yet to properly challenge him on the more troubling details of his vision for the new order that will inherit Panem once the current regime is upended, and she has a great deal to say on the matter, but she’s waiting for the right time, be it in the wake of the planned assassination or a moment of overwhelming anger.

“See? That’s a choice,” Theta observes tersely. “We could just sit on the curb and melt here, but you _chose_ to go home.” She leans pointedly into the word, shoving her hands into her pockets and nearly losing her balance for a second time.

“An unwise one,” Koschei snipes back, but in the next moment, a quick inhale breath dulls the knife edge of his tongue, and he extends a hand in her direction. “Come on, love.”

She slips her hand in his and steps past him, ready to lead him back to the apartments, instead of the other way around. His touch is sweaty and clammy, a stark contrast to the usual fire that seems to run between them, and she lets it slip from her fingers almost immediately.

He doesn’t say anything, but she can practically feel the pain emanating from somewhere behind her.

Theta should look back at him, should ask what’s wrong, should say something comforting, but she’s so afraid of making things worse that she does nothing at all.

And the hurt lingers and festers in the gross summer heat.

When they unlock the door and step through it, the apartment is empty.

Theta does not know where Romana might be — she ought to be back by now — but she tries to let the absence bother her. There are already enough worries plaguing her mind and her heart at the moment. She doesn’t need to pile on more.

Koschei turns on the broadcast almost immediately, and it grows and swells to occupy an entire wall of their bedroom. Theta merely glances at it as she sheds her jacket and tosses it over the back of chair, just to make sure that Rennette is not the primary subject of attention. She’s not. The cameras are following a pair of Careers and a smaller tribute from one of the outlying Districts that they must have recruited to their cause through intimidation and false promises. It’s a predictable pattern, and betrayal is inevitable. Only one tribute wins, and most of the time, that tribute is a Career. They’re older volunteers, raised and hand-selected to win the Games.

Theta averts her eyes and disappears into the bathroom as Koschei removes his shoes and collapses into the bed without pulling back the sheets. She feels his gaze burning into her back as she closes the door behind her and does her best to disregard the nerves that flutter in her stomach and trespass across her skin, leaving a trail of minuscule bumps in their wake.

The warmth of the shower chases away the outward symptoms of her unsettled state, however, she still feels the ghost of the sensation racing beneath her skin — unshakable, unseen, and utterly haunting.

She emerges from the bathroom a few minutes later, slightly damp, a touch more sober, and draped in the comfortable, loose-fitting clothes that she usually sleeps in. Koschei glances over at her as she approaches, but his eyes do not linger for long, instantly turning back towards the broadcast. It feels ridiculous that such a little thing should irk her, but it would be disingenuous to claim that it doesn’t. Logically, she knows that it’s a combination of exhaustion and his relentless commitment to his cause, but emotionally, it’s frustrating. It’s hard not to take changes in attitude personally, even when they can be reasonably assigned to tangible causes that exist outside of the two of them. Their entire lives are dictated by outside forces, and it is luck that provides them with any degree of sanctuary, however fleeting it may be.

Theta settles into the bed next to him, keeping her attention on him and away from the creeping horror plastered across the wall. She curls in on herself slightly, betraying her nerves.

Whether or not he notices, his hand strays to her side, idly running over the fabric that rests on top of her ribs. It masquerades as normalcy well enough that it succeeds in chasing some of her worry away, but it is far from a panacea. It treats the symptoms, but not the root of the problem — whatever that might be.

For the first time, she borrows the comment that Koschei often makes in quiet moments, inviting conversation and subtly requesting an invitation into his inner world. “You’re thinking.”

His lips quirk ever so slightly upwards, recognizing the borrowed phrase. It does not shake his mood, but it provides Theta a glimmer of hope.

After a few seconds of quiet contemplation, he inclines his head towards the scene unfolding on the wall across from them. “Our job doesn’t stop at night. Tributes are still moving. Rennette’s found a place to hide, but watching everyone else helps me help her. Plus —“ he adds with a slight shrug — “It provides a jumping off point for our conversations tomorrow.”

Disdainful mockery drips from Theta’s lips as she mimics the cliché tide of such conversations, “That kill last night was spectacular wasn’t it? I’ve always been _fascinated_ by the idea of killing. Tell me, you stood in their shoes once, what does it feel like to kill someone? It must be _powerful_.”

She drops the assumed affect from in her next thought. “Everyone always wants to know what it feels like to murder. No one ever asks what it feels like to know that you’re going to die.”

Koschei’s hand stops moving, and he turns his eyes away from her again. “People like to imagine themselves as victors, not lying amongst the fallen.”  
  
He’s engaging with her, but she is conscious that he’s thinking about something else. Something that he doesn’t want to share with her.

“They don’t really want to know. If they did, they wouldn’t exclude their children from the Reaping.”

“They don’t, but that doesn’t mean that they get sold the fantasy. The glory, the glamor, the fame. You’ve seen the Capitol children playacting at fighting in those betting rooms, they’ve been raised watching the Games, being told over and over again that the victors are heroes. These people aren’t interested in the truth — that’s why we lie. We sell them smiles and weddings and bloodstained triumph, and they latch onto that.” These words come easier, but they’re practiced. It’s a pitch he’s delivered before, over handshakes and promises.

Air trickles from Theta’s nose, warm against his side. She ought to say something, but she doesn’t have a decent response. It all feeds back into his plan, his desperate need to assassinate the President and stage a coup, and it is, perhaps, the best illustration of why no other action is revolutionary enough to eradicate the Games and rewrite the world. Any action has to be absolute. This is not the time for passive subtleties.

“Do you want someone to ask you about death?” Koschei asks after a long pause, cadence slightly slow and distinctly distracted. His eyes settle on her face, filled with the reflections of the broadcast.

Theta’s answer is born upon a single breath. “Sometimes. It feels realer than anything else.”

Koschei twists, reaching over for the controls to the projection. He mutes it with a slide of his fingers, banishing the extra noise. When he settles back against the cushions, his hand returns its idle movements. “What did it feel like when you thought you were going to die, Theta?”

He drops her name in lieu of the pet name, tone deathly serious.

For a few minutes, she doesn’t have an answer, despite the fact that she was the one who requested the question in first place. It takes a long moment for her heartbeat to settle and her mind to clear. “It hurt. I was burning. I smelled burning. I heard a scream that I didn’t know I was going to hear. I was surprised, too, I suppose. I was overconfident —” her tongue wets her lips — “and I suppose I was angry, too. Angry at you for abandoning me. Angry at luck for not being in my favor. Angry enough to make mistakes. I didn’t expect it to backfire. I thought I closed the circuit correctly. I was burning and flying and — this doesn’t make any sense does it? It’s all out of order.”

“I can follow it,” Koschei says, tone careful. She doesn’t know what he’s thinking, but she supposes it doesn’t matter. He’s listening to her pain right now. This is not about whatever is currently _off_ with him. They can deal with that later.

“Is that the only time you’ve almost died?” he asks.

Theta’s eyes narrow, suddenly suspicious. “Why?”

Koschei shrugs. “I’m only curious. You’ve lost a lot of people, after all. Death seems to follow you more than it follows other people.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. I would say the same about anyone else. It’s not personal,” Koschei’s fingers slip beneath her shirt, running over her bottom rib before pausing just below it, digging into her flesh with a surprising amount of pressure. “Have you ever been stabbed, Theta?”

“What kind of question is that?”

Koschei's fingers move slightly, massaging the area as if getting a feel for the layout of the organs that lurk deep beneath skin and fat and muscle. Usually, his touches are featherlight. This is different. It feels impersonal almost, and it only serves to intensify Theta’s nagging sense that something is wrong. There's a specter looming over them, formed from all of the secrets that Koschei continues to keep from her. 

“I’ve been stabbed,” he comments, but his voice is slightly detached and his attention elsewhere. His eyes turn towards the ceiling, looking at nothing as his fingers continue their peculiar fidgeting. Theta has the distinct feeling that he has a goal in mind, but she can’t even begin to guess what that might be.

Despite the inherent pain found in periods uncertainty, part of her hopes she never learns.

“Not what I asked,” she says, attempting to veil her discomfort and utterly failing. 

Koschei’s touch withdraws as his eyes settle back on her, as if he’s just fallen back into the present moment from some far-off future. “There’s a period of numbness before the hurt hits you, when you’re stabbed, and it doesn’t always mean you’re dying. Barring the knife hitting anything vital, if you get quick medical attention, many stab wounds are survivable.”  
  
She's sure that there's a point there somewhere — that he's planting the seeds for something else — but she doesn't know how to navigate this. She's more lost than she's felt in days.   
  
Theta’s voice is hesitant as she asks, “Koschei?”

“What?” Koschei replies, genuinely surprised. Theta’s never seen him this awkward — this out of touch — and it makes her nervous. Even in the secret moments when the mask falls away, he never seems this unnatural, this far outside of his usual element.

A shiver of foreboding sweeps through her.

“The point,” Theta demands before tacking on a last minute “ _Please_ ,” as an afterthought.

When he answers, his tone is dry and spun into an indelicate joke, “Knives tend to have a point, yes. Stabbing is an inefficient solution, otherwise.”  
  
He's deflecting. 

Theta sits up and moves to the edge of the bed, putting space between them and drawing her knees to her chest. “Is this about the assassination or something else?”

“Yes,” Koschei answers cryptically.

“Which one?” she asks, impatient for a clear answer.

He doesn’t answer her.

“Koschei, are you okay?”

It is a long time before he speaks, and once again, his voice is distant. “I think I’m just tired.”

It’s sleight of hand, distracting from the real issue with something else, and though she sees it for what it is, she chooses to let it slide. She told him that she trusted him today. She has to cling to that, and it feels profoundly unfair to allow that to fall away due to a few missteps and a conversation riddled with misgivings.

She has to forgive this.

She has to trust him.

Otherwise she has nothing left.

The mattress shifts as Koschei swings his feet off the side of the bed and stands. He brushes imaginary dirt from his clothes and glances towards the door. “I’m going to sleep on the couch. I don’t want to bother you.”

“Is that a good idea?”

Koschei shrugs. “I want to keep the television on. I know that bothers you.”

Already, the bedroom feels cold and empty.

She’s grown used to having him here, acting as a bulwark against the ceaseless tide of nightmares, but she swallows and begrudgingly says, “You’re welcome back at any time, if you want.”

He nods, and then disappears out of the door.

And Theta falls asleep alone, desperately trying to keep herself from running through their conversations over and over again in the desperate search for an explanation that is not forthcoming.

She hopes his statement about being tired is true, and that this mood of his falls away by morning.

She doesn’t know what she’ll do if it doesn’t.


	41. Chapter 41

The specter of sleep continues to cling to Theta even as the rising sun forces her into wakefulness. The culture surrounding the Games demands late nights and early mornings, and inevitably, it begins to feel as though time is passing so quickly that she will never have a chance to catch up to it. She has heard about mentors collapsing from exhaustion before — there one minute and faint the next — but she’s never witnessed it herself. Unsurprising, given her usual detachment from the proceedings.

She shifts slightly, wrapping her arms around the pillow beneath her head and screwing her eyelids shut against the sun’s early assault, and her back brushes up against Koschei’s warm body. After the sour note upon which they ended their night, she is surprised to find him in the bed next to her. She feels him tense at the contact, and a small sigh floats past her ear as a tired arm slings itself over her side.

She doubts he’s awake — barring the immediacy of a perceived emergency, Koschei tends to meet his mornings with an unmatched degree of weariness — however, the touch brings a small amount of relief flooding through her veins. Whatever demons he was contending with the night before must have been temporary, she decides, perhaps a touch foolishly. It could have easily been the incredibly late night, or the stress of the Games themselves and the pressure of the planned assassination that dragged his mind towards violence. It needn’t have anything to do with her.

Time ticks on in heartbeats and unsynchronized breaths, and after an endless eternity compressed into a series of minutes, Theta taps his hand with the pad of her pointer finger.

“Koschei.”

He moves and issues a small groan, but does not speak.

“Koschei,” she says again, slightly louder this time.

“What, love?” The words are slurred and barely enunciated, and though she is not looking at him, she can feel him dig deeper beneath the sheets, seeking to ward off the inevitable disturbance that comes alongside the morning.

“We need to be awake.”

“Time?” he asks, voice muffled by fabric and exhaustion.

Gently, she slips out from beneath his arm and leans over to look at the clock on the bedside table. The chill of the room sweeps across her skin as the bottoms of her feet trespass on the unforgiving surface of the floor. Not long ago, she had rolled out of the bed in a nervous and ungraceful panic, but she knows herself better now. She knows that she can’t continue to maintain those extremes while still keeping her wits about her.

Green light picks out the time in harsh, squared lettering. “Nine,” she reports back with a glance over her shoulder.

He’s completely buried, and only the top of his head is visible, dark hair marking a stark contrast against the crisp, impersonal white of the bedding.

“Give me a minute,” he grumbles.

Theta tilts her head and purses her lips, but she doesn’t give into the temptation to argue. He carries a heavier burden than she does, after all. He stays up later, watches the footage more closely, remembers names and faces and builds relationships with everyone he comes across in order to garner their favor.

She merely improvises, skating by and hoping that it will be enough to save them.

With a great huff of effort, she stands and crosses the room, carefully sliding open a desk door while endeavoring to make as little noise as possible. It doesn’t take her long to find both a pen and a mostly blank sheet of paper, and without bothering to read the other text scribbled on it, she flips it over and starts the list that he requested.

Though she has never engineered something capable of emitting an electromagnetic pulse before, she knows the theory behind it. She’s spent hours arguing about magnets with a merchant in her home district, has spent half her life up to her elbows in wires as she sought to change and undermine and rewrite existing systems to better serve her needs and protect her interests and the people around her. This isn’t so different.

The systems are bigger, but reducing them to parts makes her task significantly less daunting. Theta needn’t worry about the death, just the cameras.

 _…And the wedding ceremony_ , she realizes rather belatedly.

After all, the wedding had mostly been her idea, and thus, she bears the brunt of the responsibility for it. She doesn’t know where to start with that, if she’s entirely honest. She has _attended_ weddings before, but that’s a much different experience than being the one getting married. She supposes that there are people that one can hire in order to organize these things, and that more likely than not, they’ll receive some letter or another containing the President’s response to their impulsive announcement, but being certain of her own uncertainty does little to soften the bitter edge of her anxiety.

When she finishes her list, she folds the paper in half, creasing the edge with the back of a fingernail, and her brain finally bothers to absorb the text written across it. _ding as a pin_ — _side edge_ — _Theta?_ Her brow furrows and she turns it over in her hands to read the other hand of the message on the reverse side of the paper.

_Copper. Masquerading as a pin._

_Sharp inside edge._

_Ask Theta?_

Theta scans the message three more times, turning it over and over again in a search for meaning. It’s Koschei’s handwriting, but whatever this task was, she has no recollection of a question related to these words.

Almost unconsciously, her hand strays to her neck and the warm key that sits in the hollow of her collarbone, but that’s gold, not copper, and there isn’t a sharp edge or a pin back on it. Not that, then.

In a flash of a moment, she remembers that time that Rennette and Koschei spent alone before they parted ways, and Rennette’s tiny pat of a pocket, as if she was double-checking to make sure that something was still there. Back then, she assumed that Koschei had given the girl something — a small trinket to take into the Games with her — but Theta had not seen it. Nor to her knowledge, have the cameras.

Anything that Koschei gifts has a purpose. Even the flower he impulsively plucked from a seller in the marketplace carried an assigned mission — testing her, gauging her reactions, trying to figure out whether or not she’s begun to return his affections. Copper is highly conductive, and small blades are hard to come by in the Arena. Everything in the Cornucopia is designed for both scale and showmanship, not function. Bows and arrows and serrated fishing knives have their place, but they’re not delicate enough for small tasks, like cutting wires or trimming back their casings.

The thought stills her heart.

When Rennette came to ask about electrocution, Theta assumed that it was a desperate, impulsive question brought on by the suddenness of Sparrow’s death, but this speaks to planning. Planning that she had been completely unaware of. For a moment, she dares to wonder where they might have found the time to coordinate their plan, but then she remembers both the day that Koschei barred her from training and the day he demanded that she spend time working with Sparrow.

They had plenty of time to discuss things outside of her earshot, and though she should not be hurt by that — she spent entire years purposefully absent from all possible proceedings — she inexplicably is.

She doesn’t know how long she stands there silently marinating in her pain, but after a time, there’s a pair of hands on her waist and a gentle breath trickling against the curve of her ear.

“What are you doing?” Koschei asks, voice still bearing the lingering vestiges of sleep.

Theta inhales sharply through her nose and pivots to face him. Her nose bumps against his, jostling for space in the closeness. “I wrote your list,” she says quickly, presumptively tucking it into the pocket sewn into the front of his shirt. “It’s late, but it’s here.”

Koschei’s eyes drop to follow the motion, and though he raises an eyebrow, he says nothing.

The silence makes her nervous. She feels exposed, feels as though he _must_ know what she was fixating on and obsessing over, feels as though she has to scramble to find an appropriate cover, and that pressure loosens her tongue and sends it spinning towards nonsense. “The list for Ushas. Or whoever you give things for Ushas to these days. Not like she’s available, is it? All tied up with running the Games and such. Makes sense, having a contact. Or a runner. Whatever you call it. Could be a dog for I know. Very smart, dogs. Not raccoon smart, but clever. Once worked with someone who taught their dog to fetch deliveries. Imagine that, a dog fetching deliveries.”

The words die away in her tongue as he continues to watch her, face scribed with faint amusement. “Do you ever say what you mean, love?”

Her panic redoubles. Heart fluttering uncontrollably within the confines her chest, she scrambles further into her flimsy defense. “Why? Are you keeping score? Cause I hate to break it to you, but you’re losing.”

There’s a hand on her chin and a gentle thumb on her bottom lip and a steady gaze burning into hers, and for a second, she wonders why she even _bothers_. But then she remembers that bothering is the _point_. Bothering is the linchpin that’s been holding her life together for years. She fought against herself, she fought against the world, she fought against him, and though she was often tempted to surrender, she never did. She stole scant comfort in night skies and quiet moments and the rare occasions when she felt as though another person was truly listening to her.

And right now, she _desperately_ wants to be listened to.

She doesn’t want to be brushed off and ignored and blindly guided towards whatever tempting distraction he dangles in front of her.

“First of all —“ she says, raising a hand to lead his touch away from her face — “I’m not interested in your redirections right now. Second of all, you can’t just spend a night being weird and talking about stabbing and expect me to forget about it. I may have been drunk, but I’m not stupid, Koschei. And third of all, what did you give Rennette? Was it planned? Did you know she was going to come ask me about electrocution? Did you plan that? Did you wait until I was vulnerable and then tell her to strike?”

Once Theta starts asking questions, she can’t seem to _stop_ asking them. They pour from her mouth and pile up so quickly that Koschei takes a step backward to buy himself both space and time.

Theta can practically see the cool façade crumble and give way. Fear — real, genuine fear — flashes in his eyes, and his lips part as his hands find his face, running through his beard before wiping the lingering tiredness from his face. The shift is palpable, and though she ought to feel her own terror rise to meet his, she instead finds the cooling bliss of _relief_. She is interested in truth — not the countless lies that he’s told in order to make people feel more comfortable in his presence.

Koschei moves, turning on the ball of his bare foot, and in response, Theta scrambles towards the door, preemptively blocking his escape should he try to make one.

He doesn’t.

He merely paces, marking a line back and forth across the floor of the bedroom — sixteen steps, turn, sixteen steps again.

Theta’s eyes track him, alight with interest and suspicion.

It is some time before he pauses in the middle of the room, hands falling away from his face as he looks at her, desperation wearing at his expression. “Are you sure?”

Theta does not hesitate before saying, “Yes.”

A sigh falls from his lips — heavy and resigned. “Do you mind —“ He finishes the statement with a vague spin of a finger in the air, indicating that he wants her to turn around, look away, leave him unobserved.

Theta does not budge. She merely crosses her arms across her chest, leans her back against the closed door, and waits for him to start talking.

Defeated, Koschei stares at her for a few uncertain seconds before stepping backwards and sinking onto the end of the bed. He straightens his legs out in front of him, propping his heels against the floor as his eyes appeal towards the uncaring and immutable ceiling that hangs over them.

“ _First of all_ ,” he says sharply, a mocking edge circling the words, “I was under the impression that you _liked_ feeling wanted.”

Koschei pauses, glancing over at Theta for reassurance or denial or an answer. She offers him nothing beyond open ears and the tangled threads of her remaining patience.

He shrugs and turns his face away from her — unseeing and unseen.

“I _may_ have leveraged that knowledge at inappropriate times for my own ends.”

There’s another lengthy pause, and once again, Theta declines to fill it. She’s waiting and thinking — gauging the truthfulness of every word, trying to figure out whether or not he’s simply placating her with elegantly gilded lies. For now, she thinks he’s being genuine, but she doesn’t yet dare to decide what that might mean. She wants to gather as many pieces of the puzzle as possible before attempting to put them together. Up until this point, she’s failed to see the big picture — not because she’s incapable, but because she’s been purposefully and deliberately left in the dark. She’s done tolerating that.

He cannot continually ask her to trust him while denying her that same regard.

“As for Rennette —“ Koschei’s hands rise to his pocket as realization floods his face. He unfolds it with slightly trembling fingers, glancing at the words that he had scribbled upon it. “I asked both Rennette and Sparrow early on if their family gave them trinkets to take into the Arena. Sparrow had one — a metal photo print that his older brother gave him — but Rennette did not. I took that as an opportunity to make sure that she had something _useful_. I worked with a designer to create a multitool that would make it past the officials — the same person, actually, who made that key that you’ve been keeping around your neck. I wanted it to be useful for a _number_ of things, not just your long-dreaded speciality. Especially since, at that point in time, I had no way of knowing if you were going to decide to _do your job_. I gave Rennette a laundry list of possible uses for it when I gave it to her, and she came to you on her own. I did not tell her to talk to you, and as you _might_ recall, I told you that you didn’t have to teach her if you didn’t want to.”

Theta’s tongue darts out to wet her lips. Between the late night and the grief and the constant attempts to keep herself grounded, she had _forgotten_. Memories twist and fold to meet the current perception. It’s easy to rewrite them — to throw out the inconvenient truths and hold on only to whatever bits and pieces serve your narrative. Perhaps she should apologize, but she decides to wait, instead. She wants to know what he’ll say next, wants to know that she’s right to forgive him.

For the first time since she challenged him, her eyes fall away to the floor.

Koschei takes advantage of the break in her attention to turn the tide. He crosses the room, closes the distance between them, and the air feels like smoke and fire and electricity and the air tastes like peppermint. “Where everything else is concerned —“ There’s a hand on her neck and another on the side of her face, guiding her eyes towards his.

She expects to see a lie painted within them, but she only sees that broken, scattered, truth that she started searching for weeks ago.

“You were right, yesterday. I needed a better plan. A better distraction, and, most importantly, I need a way to absolve one of us should things go sour. A knife in the ribs means that you keep your freedom, even if I lose mine.”

One of his hands moves lower, tracing out the line that he marked the previous night. “Right there. It’ll hurt. I can’t make it not hurt, but someone will save you. I’ll leave it in, even. Slow the bleeding, buy you more time.”  
  
He says it like he expects her to be impressed, like he's made every effort to appease her doubts and deserves praise and acclaim and love for it, but Theta is not impressed. She's horrified. Koschei has taken a foolish plan and made it exponentially, monumentally worse.

Theta ducks out from beneath his arm, bile rising to the back of her throat. “No.”

It’s a short word, but a powerful one.

“What do you mean, _no_?” Koschei demands, frustration spreading across his face as he whirls to face her. “Don’t tell me you have something better? Something you’ve been holding onto? A brilliant, drunken, reckless idea free from the touch of raccoons?”

“No, but there has to be _something_ else. Romana —“

His eyes flash, and his voice breaks, “Romana has her own responsibilities to attend to. She’s juggling moving parts elsewhere. Killing the President is you and me, and just between the two of us, you don’t seem like you have the nerve to murder him yourself.”

The words pummel her one by one. They’re designed to hurt her, designed to leave bruises, designed to throw her off-balance, and they work. She’s no longer in charge of this fight. No longer winning. No longer dictating the pace and direction of their conversation. She’s drowning in their overlapping horror.

“I —“ Theta stumbles, fighting to cobble together something — _anything_ — useful, but improvisation completely and utterly fails her. “I need time. I need —“

“You don’t _have_ time, love,” Koschei growls, intending to grind the conversation to a halt and buy her cooperation.

“You don’t get to decide that,” Theta spits back. “The Games decide that, and they’re _not done yet_.”

She doesn’t know what she feels, doesn’t know what she thinks, doesn’t know what to _do_. Her body is filled to the brim with the same hollow numbness that Koschei said precedes the pain of being stabbed. She’s not fire and love and faith — she’s an echo of herself, lost and confused and suddenly hopeless. The one person in the entire world she thought she could trust is willing to stab her in order to get a job done, and moreover, he was willing to make that plan without telling her about it.   
  
It's monumental. 

Her blood runs cold. The ghost of his touch lingers on her ribs, and phantom pain blossoms beneath it. In a fit of impulsiveness, she slips his hold, yanks the door open, and _runs_.

Runs out the door. Runs down the hallway. Runs up the stairs. Runs to the door that marks the entrance to District 12 penthouse.

With luck, Koschei will assume she went downstairs, and it will be hours before he finds her.

She knocks and takes a step backward, hoping against hope that Yaz will be the one to answer.


	42. Chapter 42

Theta practically falls over the threshold when Yaz opens the door.

“Can I borrow your roof access?” Theta asks as she struggles to regain her balance. It’s a pale imitation of the usual question, tainted by desperate energy, a tangible amount of fear, the wrinkled mess of her pajamas, and the bare feet that speak to the rush in which she fled her own apartment.

Yaz lets go of the door, allowing it to swing shut behind Theta, and she circles around to set a roadblock between Theta and the door that leads to the roof. Her hands find Theta’s arms — insistent but not invasive — and Theta can feel her entire body shaking against them. She hadn’t realized that she’s still trembling — had just assumed that she would be able to pretend that she’s fine in the same way that she has always pretended to be fine — but compared to the ever-steady presence of Yasmin Khan, she’s a veritable mess. It’s embarrassing, but not surprising. She doubts that anyone has threatened to stab Yaz this morning — with benevolent intentions or otherwise.

“Not when you’re like this, you can’t,” Yaz answers.

Theta tries to sidestep to break the touch and make a break for the roof, but Yaz follows suit, maintaining the makeshift barrier.

“I need —“ Theta’s words are barely louder than her breaths, yet her voice still threatens to break.

“You _don’t_ ,” Yaz corrects sternly, interrupting Theta mid-thought.

Theta’s frustration bristles. She came here because she thought that Yaz, of all people, would give her the space she needs, only to find herself subject to yet another person who presumes to know what might be _best_ for her.Koschei already steamrolled her opinions; she doesn’t need Yaz piling onto the inherent pain of being ignored. “That’s not for you to decide.”

“I’m not going to let you put yourself in danger on purpose, Theta.”

“I’m not putting myself in danger,” Theta snaps back. She breaks Yaz’s grip with a short step backwards, back bumping against the closed door. “I need space. I need to hide. I need —“ This time, Yaz doesn’t have to interrupt her to cut the sentence short. It dies away on its own once Theta begins to realize how poorly conceived this plan was. She doesn’t know what she expected to accomplish, doesn’t know why she thought that her friend would let her exist in such a state without asking questions, doesn’t even know what she is allowed to say about her current situation. She simply assumed that this would be the last place that Koschei would look for her and failed to think any further beyond that point.

_And that probably isn’t even true,_ she realizes rather belatedly.

After all, Koschei found her on the roof the last time she sought refuge there — tossed her a flask of whiskey and listened to her truths and made sure that she didn’t fall off — and they knew each other _much_ less thoroughly back then.

The thought that he might knock on this door at any moment sends panic streaking through her muscles, and a ragged sob cuts the edges of her throat, however, she holds her breath to keep the tears at bay. She’s not going to cry in front of Yaz. Not over Koschei, anyway.

“What happened?” Brown eyes dart from point to point on Theta’s face as Yaz, too, takes a step backwards, lowering her hands and putting a bit of extra space between them, though she is careful to keep herself firmly planted on the path that lies between Theta and the roof access. “Is it your tribute? I haven’t tuned in. Just woke up. Same as you, by the looks of it.” Yaz’s voice stays steady, and Theta can hear the brightness that she tries to interject into the words in order to build up a façade of normalcy, the same way that one would lure a nervous stray towards an offer of shelter.

“No,” Theta manages after a deep breath and a long pause. “It’s not that.”

“Did something happen with Koschei?”

Theta does not reply, but she knows that that is probably answer enough. Yaz has always been enormously clever, as one would expect from someone who won the Games through sheer survival skills and the good sense to keep their nose clean and stay out of trouble. There’s no one else like Yaz among the ranks of victors — no one else who can honestly say that they did not take a life to claim their fame and save their own skin.

“Where is he?” Yaz asks.

“I don’t know.” It’s the truth, or close enough to it. “Chasing after me, most likely. Probably thinks I went downstairs.”

“Why would he be chasing you?”

“Because I ran away from him.”

A sigh falls from Yaz’s lungs as her eyes fall away, turning towards the ground. “And you don’t think he trusts you enough to wait in your rooms until you come back?”

“I don’t know what he thinks of me.”

“He’s your fiancé. He’s in love with you.” Every word is matter of fact, spoken with a conviction that Theta does not share.

“I don’t even know what that _means_ , Yaz.” Theta cannot seem to stop tears from welling up in the corners of her eyes, cannot seem to keep her voice steady and the truth close to her chest, cannot seem to do anything but fail Koschei and their relationship and all of the other people that surround them. “I thought he loved me. Thought I looked at him and knew what that meant, but if that was true, then we wouldn’t have days like this, we wouldn’t…”

Once again, the sentence fades before she can finish it, only to be replaced by a frantic apology for wasting Yaz’s time. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here. I should go somewhere else.” Fear breeds fear, and it is easy for her fear of what Koschei might do to become a fear that nobody in this world can tolerate her. She’s been steadily improving, steadily working on herself, steadily getting to a place where her terror and pain are no longer so all-consuming that she fails to consider the true feelings of the people around her, but when she stumbles back on old habits, she falls hard.

“No. No,” Yaz says, taking another couple of steps away and circling around towards the sitting room. “You should take a seat, and you and I can figure this out like friends normally do. It’s not going to do you any good to bottle all of that up until it explodes again. You need to tell somebody, and for some reason or another, your feet brought you here.” She sinks onto the couch as she speaks, gesturing that Theta come and sit beside her. “I won’t judge you. Won’t judge him, even. Not unless you want me to. And best of all, whatever you say doesn’t leave here. Everyone else is out, so it’s just you and me.”

Theta’s hand reaches behind her, palm tightening against the cool metal of the knob as she considers her options. She doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t want to be here, but she doesn’t want to be anywhere else either. 

With great hesitation, she looses her grip and steps forward, slowly crossing the room and easing herself onto the very edge of the couch. Every muscle in her body is tense, and her feet are poised to flee if necessary.

Theta’s tongue wets her lips as she considers both the truth and the lie, balancing the space between them.A memory swims to mind, and echo of an offhand admittance made _days_ ago, and though she is tempted to brush it aside as stilly and unimportant, her mind cannot help but continuously return to it. It’s the sort of question that decides how much trust she can place in Yaz, what she can tell and what she needs to hold back. “Who asked you about hiring an assassin?”

A disbelieving laugh heaves forth from Yaz’s lungs as she says, “I’m sorry, _what_?”

Theta doesn’t believe one bit of it — not the laugh, not the mishearing, not the question. She’s seen and participated in too many deflections lately to allow herself to be fooled by such a fundamental ruse.

“Days ago. You said that someone’s asked you about hiring assassins before. Well, not directly, but you implied it. Who was it?”

“Theta, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Don’t play games with me,” Theta warns. For a moment, her eyes flash and her chin lowers, and she looks every bit the picture of a woman who has held power in her hands before and is fully willing to wield it again. It’s easy to take her fear of Koschei’s words and shape it and redirect it into anger towards towards others, easy to assume that other people are in cahoots with him, easy to assume that the entire world is against her.

It’s easier to be vengeful than it is to be _terrified_.

A long silence hangs between them, spent wallowing in pent-up breaths and intensely staring at nothing in particular. Finally, after what seems like an eternity, Yaz speaks, “I told him I wouldn’t say.”

Impatience nags at Theta’s mind, urging the tiny hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end and compelling her tongue to snap, “Was it Koschei?”

The other woman’s answer remains frustratingly noncommittal. “Maybe. What of it?”

Theta’s anger worsens, turning her words sour. “Did you point him towards one?”

Theta’s insistence hits a nerve, and Yaz nearly jumps out of her seat as she tries to defend herself. “ _No_! Do I look like the sort of person who knows how to order a hit on somebody? I’ve never killed anybody. Never wanted to, even. Just found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time with one too many entries in a fish bowl, is all.”

Theta sniffs in slight disbelief.

“Fine,” she replies with all of the hollowness of somebody who remains entirely unconvinced.

It’s a cruel thing to say and a crueler way to say it, and Theta knows that, but in her hurt, she doesn’t particularly care. In this moment, she doesn’t feel like she can trust anybody — not Koschei, not Yaz, not even Amy, if she was around. She’s alone, unmoored, and entirely without the support that she very rapidly grew accustomed to having.

“Tell me what’s really bothering you,” Yaz says after a passing pause, attempting to dispel some of the tension from her body with a shake of her head and a moving of hands and a quick switch of her crossed legs. “You can trust me, I promise.”

A knock cuts through the room, and Theta immediately sends herself to the floor in a panic, pressing herself flat against the carpet in a desperate and foolish attempt to hide in plain sight, relying on only the happenstance of position to keep her veiled from view. Yaz, on the other hand, casts a wary glance in the direction of the door before wearily rising to her feet, picking her way delicately around Theta’s splayed limbs before crossing the room, undoing the lock, and cracking the door open.

“Have you seen Theta, by any chance?”

Koschei’s voice floats through the air with ease, unburdened by tiredness or fear or physical exertion. Theta had assumed that he would run after her, that he would have taken to the streets to make absolutely sure that she wasn’t going to run her mouth to the wrong people and mess up his plans, but it seems for all the world like he had merely given her a few minutes headstart before casually strolling up to the place that she was most likely to be.

“It’s early for her to be up here, isn’t it?” Yaz says in a lie that immediately buys Theta’s favor back.

“We had an _unusual_ morning,” Koschei replies with characteristic diplomacy, skirting the issue and dulling its edges. “Which necessitated having a conversation that neither of us were ready to have.”

Theta’s teeth sink into the inside of her cheek, biting back words and reminding herself to stay quiet. He can’t see her from his position at the door, and it would be foolish to sacrifice both the temporary peace found in hiding and Yaz’s integrity out of the impulsive and petty desire to correct him.

“All mornings during the Games are unusual, aren’t they?” Yaz says with a brightness that hides her former worry. “I’m sure it’ll pass. Any news on your girl?”

Theta bristles with slight annoyance. She wants Yaz to send him away, wants him to feel as lost and alone as she currently does, but she also knows that Yaz and Koschei are on good enough terms that Koschei knows more about Yaz’s family than she does. 

In this moment, she resents that friendship more than ever.

“Haven’t had a chance to check in,” Koschei admits. There’s a shuffling of feet and a shifting of fabric, and Theta presses herself even closer to the floor. It has very little practical function, but it makes her _feel_ like she’s doing something, and in the turmoil of the moment, that’s enough to merit doing it.

There’s a small pause before Koschei adds, “Are you alone?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Can I come in? Some conversations are best held behind closed doors.”

Theta’s breath catches in her throat. He can’t come in here. One step and he’ll see her.

She pushes herself onto her knees and scuttles backward, pressing herself into a corner instead, where she has half a chance at staying concealed just in case Yaz decides to let him in.

“Is it important?” Yaz asks, hesitation evident.

“I would say so.”

Yaz glances towards Theta, taking an extra moment to find her due to the sudden change in hiding spot, and then turns back towards the door to offer up a brusque nod. “The roof’s nice at this time of day. They say clear air is wonderful for the head, you know. Even if you can’t use that, than I can.”

Theta can’t see him, but there must have been a nod or a gesture of some sort, because the next thing she knows, Yaz is opening the door a little bit wider and Koschei’s passing through it. He does not so much as glance in Theta’s direction as he passes, but she stares at him. She takes in every bit of his body language. The hand perched in a pocket and the tension that he can’t quite hide. He’s gotten changed since she left him — put on proper clothes and a pair of shoes.

He hadn’t chased after her after all, and Theta does not know whether that is a relief or an even greater reason not to trust it.

After a moment’s thought, she settles on the latter.

She gives them a few agonizingly long minutes of lead time before she moves from her hiding spot — joints creaking as she stands. She’s not old yet, but she’s much less young than she used to be, and after a couple quick stretches, she eases open the door that leads to the rooftop and climbs the stairs with care. The shaded cement is cold beneath her bare feet, and she is careful to make as little noise as possible. When she reaches the door at the top, she cracks it open a couple inches, but does not dare to venture outside. 

There are no other hiding places besides this one.

Yaz and Koschei have their backs to her as they sit on the edge of the roof and the world — staring out at everything that lies below.

Theta’s heart beats in her chest and in her throat, anticipating the terrible things that might be said about her, the horrible admissions that might be made, the plots that might be uncovered.

Instead of those things, however, Koschei merely says, “I don’t know what she expects from me.”

“Well, what do you expect from her?” Yaz says, shifting slightly as she draws her knees to her chest.  
  
The words are casual, familiar, spoken in testament to a friendship that Theta had been almost entirely unaware of before this year. 

“I don’t know.”

“That’s a lie,” Yaz scoffs, but her overall tone remains gentle.

Koschei cranes his head back to look at the sky, and Theta closes the gap in the door until it’s little more than a hairsbreadth’s of space, just in case he chooses to lay back or turn around. For a moment, she questions whether or not this is the right thing to do. She can justify eavesdropping a dozen ways, claim that she’s looking only to assuage her intense fear and prove to herself that she will be okay, but some small, dark, creeping part of her knows that she’s looking for mistakes, too. She’s bitter and upset and looking to trap him in a lie. All the pretty words and stolen moments and gentle touches, shatter in moments of anger, giving way to an enormous, terrible, all-consuming fear that joy and love are temporary things, and that he’s merely using her to carry out his revenge.

He’s reassured her about it a dozen times over — both directly and indirectly — but in moments when trust is broken, those reassurances mean next to nothing.

“Sometimes she looks at me like I’m her worst enemy. I don’t want her to do that anymore.”

Theta’s hand trembles, and she loses her grip on the edge of the door, barely managing to save it before it has a chance to slam shut and reveals her presence. She’s not sure what she’s feeling — rage and indignation and a dozen other things besides. How dare he presume to frame this as her fault? She had not been the one threatening to stab a _friend_.

“Presumably you say something before she does that, yeah?” Yaz says, ignorant to Theta’s momentary plight. “Maybe consider learning from that, apologizing, and not doing it again.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Isn’t it?”

The question is sharp enough to shut him up, and for a moment, the roof is nothing but silence, the beating of Theta’s fearful, angry heart, and the vague buzz of life happening somewhere else.

“I make plans, and she brushes them aside like they’re _nothing_.”

“Maybe they’re bad plans. Did you consider that? You’re not allowed to like someone because she challenges you and then get mad when she keeps challenging you. Sometimes you’ve just got to swallow your pride and listen and decide whether or not she might have a point.” There’s a slight pause before Yaz adds, “In my experience, she usually does. She cares, you know, and she’s the only one of us who refuses to around here pretending like she doesn’t.” Using one arm, Yaz gestures vaguely in the direction of the rest of the Capitol. “And a lot of people would say she better than you because of it.”

“She is better than me.”

The words are so quiet that Theta’s ears can barely register them, and even then, she questions whether or not she heard them correctly. She couldn’t have. The thought is too firmly set at odds with her current view of him, too far away from anything that she might have said about him, too kind and free from anger to be entirely viable. She leans closer, strains more, opens the door a bit wider, and tries to figure out what he actually said.

“She has always been better than me.”

Theta pedals backward in shock, completely forgetting about the set of stairs that lies behind her. Her right foot lands on ground that isn’t there, and she tumbles backward.

The door slams as her fingers give way, plunging the entire stairwell into her darkness.

It’s seven steps before she catches herself — seven seconds spent biting her lip and scrambling for grip and desperately trying to control her fall enough that she won’t hit her head — and when she finally manages plant her hands and anchor herself, she feels something in her wrist crack.

The door above her opens, sudden sunlight sears her eyelids, and anger and fear give way to shame.

_She’s been caught_.


	43. Chapter 43

Through the tears staining her face and the panic still fluttering in her heart, Theta looks up to see Koschei silhouetted in the doorway. She expects him to say something — _anything_ — but for a long time, Koschei says nothing at all. 

It is only when Yaz appears at his side that he turns his face away and coolly remarks, "I thought you said she wasn't here." 

"She wasn't," Yaz begins to protest, but a sharp glare over Koschei's shoulder as he takes the first step down the stairs catches her in the lie. 

His descent is slow — almost painfully so — and Theta tries to use that time to scramble to her feet, but she knocks her injured hand against the floor again, and stars flare and burn and die in her vision. They are not the comforting stars that Amy has shrouded her in for many of the public events this season, not the stars that had kissed her in that private room when Koschei traced her scars and offered answers, not the life-sustaining sun that sometimes graces Koschei's features when he smiles and means it. They are the sort of stars that consume planets and eventually collapse into a painful nothingness that devours everything in its gravity. 

Freshly shined shoes stop on the step beside her, and after a couple breaths of hesitation, Koschei sits. 

Theta is acutely aware of the contrast between them in this moment. Koschei is collected, properly clothed, free from the dirt and grime that one naturally accumulates while slinking around on concrete staircases, whereas Theta is sure that she looks every bit the picture of someone who fled the house in the middle of the night. 

Koschei speaks first.

"You ran." 

It is a statement, not a question. 

"You threatened me."

That, too, is a statement. 

Theta lifts her chin and tilts her head to look at him properly. Theirs is an awkward arrangement — one person sitting down as if for a meeting while the other is sprawled across three unforgiving concrete steps, too worried about jostling her wrist to attempt to wrestle herself into a more dignified position. In this moment, she is beyond any hope of dignity, and she is angry at him for clinging to it, angry at him for not fighting back at her, angry at him for convincing her that she could love him. 

Koschei turns his face away after a moment, lifting his eyes towards the ceiling as he thinks. He is not hidden behind his usual mask in this moment, but she still can't find it in herself to believe in whatever this new façade may be. She has grown used to glimpsing the truth within his rage, but this is not rage. This is something else entirely. It’s calm, or something close to it. 

She doesn’t understand how a person could be calm in a moment like this.

Somewhere above them, Yaz rustles, scrambling around to find a serviceable doorstop before disappearing from view, plunging the pair into relative privacy without robbing them of light. 

Koschei says nothing, and after a long moment, Theta rolls onto her back. The fingers of her good hand cradle her injured wrist to offer it a vague notion of support, and even still, a hiss of pain flees through gritted teeth. 

She meant to sit up, to match him, to challenge him, but it's all she can do to lie there and breathe, counting the stars that trespass upon her world and fighting to keep tears from her eyes. She's felt worse pain before. She electrocuted herself and felt her body burn from the inside out. 

“Did you break it?” Koschei finally asks, inclining his head towards her swollen wrist. 

Still on her back, Theta glances between Koschei and the wrist in question, somewhat surprised by the mundanity of the question. There are a dozen uncertain specters hanging over them, a thousand accusations to lob, a hundred sins to atone for, yet Koschei is ignoring them all. Perhaps he senses her terror. Perhaps he wants to avoid being held accountable for his mislaid schemes. Perhaps he knew where he wanted to start, but not where to go from there. 

Theta doesn't know for certain, and it seems dangerous to guess. Every time she’s guessed before, she’s managed to guess wrong. 

"I don't know," is the only response she can muster at first, but the silence that follows it is so dreadful that she reaches into the last of her reserves and finds enough energy to fill it. "I've never broken anything before. Don't know what it feels like. I've seen other people break things, but that's not the same, is it?" 

Silence stretches between them again — unknowing and uncertain. 

This time, she waits for Koschei break it. “Can I see it?” 

“No. You can’t.”

Perhaps it’s petty of her to deny Koschei the opportunity to help, but in this moment, Theta cannot find it in herself to trust him. She fell into him, and he promised to _catch_ her, and instead he turned around and asked her if he could stab her beneath the guise of keeping her _safe_. It has fractured what little peace she cobbled together and casts shade across those stolen moments that seemed to shine so brightly the night before. 

Beside her, Koschei exhales through his nose, and it’s as much an annoyed sniff as a weary sigh. “Would you let Yaz look at it?” 

“No.”

That particular denial is not true, and they both know it. 

Koschei lifts a hand and pinches the bridge of his nose, screwing his eyes closed for a passing beat. There’s a glimmer of rage in the gesture, and it is familiar enough that it allows Theta to let down her guard a bit. It isn’t much, but it’s enough to spur her to ask, albeit bitterly, “If you plan to stab me, it doesn’t much matter if my hand’s working, does it?” 

“ _Theta_.” The invocation of her name is not quite a warning, but it’s a roll and a hiss all the same. 

Theta mirrors his tone in kind. “ _Koschei_.”

Their gazes meet in the space between them — soft and hard and entirely unforgiving all at the same time. The contact lingers, but Koschei rips his eyes away as he finally asks a question that must have been eating away at him. “How much did you hear?” 

“Enough.”

Theta expects that to be the end of it, expects Koschei to retreat in fear and leave her to lick her wounds, but instead, he prods further, “And the fall?” 

Theta wrinkles her nose in response. “What of it?” 

She has no interest in explaining the fall to him, in unpacking the slipping fingers and stumbling feet and the severity with which she had recoiled upon hearing his words. He’ll find a way to leverage that against her, to spin it in his favor, to make it seem that even in a moment of doubt, she couldn’t help but be moved by him, and perhaps she is afraid of such a thing happening because it is somewhat rooted in truth. She has spent her entirely life selectively baring her heart on her sleeve, bandying about the impersonal parts of her hurt and pain and trauma in order to fool everyone into thinking that it was the whole of her being, veiling insecurities behind babbling about raccoons, impulsive outbursts at state dinners, and a general refusal to do anything that she has been asked to do. Opening up to the possibility of love has forced her to dig deeper than that, and she’s not entirely sure that she’s comfortable with that. 

Koschei knows more about her than anyone else in Panem, and that is utterly terrifying. She can lie to his face and still be known, yet she does not always have the same power over him. She’s getting better, growing increasingly observant, memorizing his quirks in the same way that he has memorized hers, but he has years to build an advantage over her. While she’s been basking in her misery, he’s been building plans and figuring out his feelings in turn. He had a chance to isolate the two things, to focus on them in turns across a decade and a half, and she’s been fighting to catch up on both fronts in a matter of weeks — desperately trying to untangle the mess that she’s found herself in, chasing one string and then another in turn, only to repeatedly encounter the same set of knots.

It’s difficult not to feel overwhelmed. 

The world is changing, and she is changing, and Koschei is changing, and it’s too much for any one person to take in. It was unfair to expect that of her, unfair to demand it, unfair to chide her when she demands data that she doesn’t yet have. 

He promised that he would catch her, but she’s still constantly struggling to keep pace with him, and when she finally starts to feel confident, the ground gives way beneath her feet. 

“Why did you go to Yaz?” she asks, changing the subject before he has a chance to press her further on the subject of her fall. For all her fear and all her hurt, some part of her remains genuinely curious. 

Koschei shrugs, turning his eyes away. “You didn’t have shoes. You weren’t going to get far.” 

“Oh.” Theta isn’t entirely sure what she expected, but it wasn’t anything that simple. Everything with Koschei always seems like a production — a conspiracy that goes ten layers deep, a carefully conceived act, a magic trick done in the shadows. Even when he fails, it’s complicated. Stabbing her is not the simplest solution to the problem at hand, and yet, it’s the one he proposed. It’s dramatic. It requires showmanship. It puts yet another layer of armor between the two of them and an uncaring populace. 

“Were you looking for something else?” he queries, keeping his face turned away and half veiled in shadow.

Theta shrugs. “I guess not.” It’s hard to maintain her anger when he refuses to meet her in it, and though she tries to hold tightly to her rage and indignation, she can feel it slipping through her fingers, fading beneath this strange, ineffable calm.

Koschei pulls his legs beneath him, crossing his ankles and hooking his hands together past his knees. It’s not quite as defensive as the ball that Theta tends to roll into whenever their conversations bump up against her long history of grief, but it’s a marked shift from the easy feigned openness with which he normally navigates the world. 

“Clearly you would prefer it if I didn’t stab you.”

Theta barks out a single beat of laughter, and it echoes off the tight walls. “Well done. That’s a ten point answer if ever there was one.” Her words drip with sarcasm, but it’s little more than a defense mechanism. She’s keeping him at a distance in order to keep him from seeing the depth of her pain and the true extent of her present vulnerability. She tilts her head back and closes her eyes, tired of staring at this grimy stairwell, tired of the pain in her arm, tired of being pulled backwards whenever she tries to grow and move forwards. 

Beside her, she feels Koschei shift, just barely brushing up against her body. She doesn’t flinch, but she does gently maneuver her injured wrist further out of his reach. 

“I won’t do it if you don’t want me to.” 

“And I’m supposed to trust that _how_ , exactly? You weren’t even going to tell me about it. I had to figure it out on my own.” 

There’s a slight pause before Koschei speaks again, and when he does, the words are underlined with no small amount of discomfort. “You only put it together because I dropped hints, and besides, it wouldn’t have even been on the table at all if you hadn’t rewritten the plans.” 

Eyes still closed, Theta scoffs, “You said it was brilliant.” 

“Just because it was brilliant doesn’t mean that it doesn’t require readjustment, and besides, you said yourself that it wasn’t a large enough distraction. I had to come up with something else, something better, something that would accommodate our ambitions.” 

“And your something better was _stabbing me_?” 

“I was trying to _save you_.” 

Theta opens her eyes and finally sits up, ignoring the pain that cuts her to the bone. “I don’t want to be stabbed, and I never asked to be _saved_. I know the risks we’re taking. I know the consequences that come if things go wrong, and I’m prepared to face them.” She’s terrified of death, and even more petrified in the face of imprisonment, but that doesn’t change the fact that she has never really tasted freedom and that whenever her mind drifts back into memory, she still remembers what it feels like to kill and be killed. Failing would only make all of her suffering official, but success means real change, it means saving others from her fate, it means creating a better world, and she is willing to put herself on the line to make that happen. “I’ve had a target on my back for years now. You saved me once. If you do it again then I’m in your debt, and I can’t think of a worse place to be, especially if I’m bleeding out at the same time.” 

All at once, they’re in each other’s space again, breathing the same air, feeling the same heat. 

Koschei does not smell like peppermint today. He forgot at least one thing before coming up here, and somehow, that’s oddly comforting. It’s a small crack. It proves that he’s bothered. He’s not just adjusting course to say whatever it is that he thinks she wants to hear. He’s doing it for himself, too — clearing his conscience, fixing a mistake, fighting to work past his preconceived notions and do something right. 

“I can think of a few worse places to be.” There’s a hint of a smile, a breath of relief. 

“Need I remind you that in that scenario, I’m bleeding to death from a stab wound that _you_ gave me.” Even as she restates her irritation, it feels a tiny bit less suffocating, a tiny bit further away. He may not have apologized, he may have dug his heels in a bit and further justified his position, but he also said that he wouldn’t do it. She feels heard, and though that isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, in circumstances like these, small graces feel like they are worth their weight in gold. 

“ _To death_ is a bit dramatic, love. Someone would help you.” 

“ _Koschei_.” It’s caught somewhere between being playful and dead serious, and even she’s not sure which side she falls on. It’s easy to fall into him when he’s being charming, when she feels valued, when the train upon which they’re riding slows for long enough to allow them to drink in the landscape and each other’s company.

Not very long ago, she questioned what other people saw in him — questioned the wave of popularity that earned him the elite status that he enjoys as the eminent victor — but in this moment, it’s easy to swept up in it, too. After all, she likes him. Not all of him, maybe. Not some of the choices he makes, not his tendency to be withholding, not the careful control that he exercises over his persona, but the good parts of him. The parts that memorize her scars and seek to rectify the problems that he’s caused and make sure that she is going to be okay.

Her eyes linger on his as she adds, “An apology would go a long way.” 

Koschei’s teeth sink into his bottom lip as he hesitates. After half an age and an interminable number of heartbeats, he says, “I should have spoken to you before making a decision.” 

It’s not quite what she asks for, but it still shoulders a significant burden. It is an admittance that he was wrong, and for now, that’s enough. She knows apologies are difficult for him, that the last one took several days and a shroud of darkness to ease from his lips, but she prefers something to nothing and peace to anger, and she offers forgiveness anyway. 

“Thank you.” 

Koschei studies her face for a long moment before he asks, “Will you let me look at it now?” 

Theta’s tongue sneaks out to nervously wet her lips, but she nods. 

With an incredible degree of gentleness, Koschei reaches out and moves her injured arm from her lap and into his own, pausing only when a pained hiss slips through her teeth and she snaps her head away to hide her tears. 

“You probably shouldn’t listen at doorways, you know,” he comments as he ever so slightly presses the pad of his thumbs against the inside of her arm, at the place where her scars stop and the swelling begins.

“Knew that while I was doing it, thanks.”

“And yet you did it anyway.” He turns her wrist over, checking the other side, gauging the extent of the damage. 

She is tempted to snip back at him, to cover her pain with a joke or a flippant remark, but she bites her tongue and thinks better of it. “I did.”

“Did it make you feel better?” A single dark eyebrow quirks upward, carried aloft by his curiosity. 

He flips her hand again, and she winces. “Obviously not.” 

She is speaking both of the physical pain and of her fear. Every word that she overheard — even the words that were meant in earnest — drove the knife a little deeper, made her more and more conscious of the fact that she was actively choosing to invade his privacy while gaining nothing from it. 

She wanted to validate her anger — wanted to trap him with his own words — and instead, she found only exposure and a broken bone. 

Theta’s gaze slides back to him, watching him weigh another comment on the tip of his tongue, but eventually, he swallows it back. Perhaps it’s a battle that they’ll fight later, or perhaps he’s just letting it go. 

“If we go back to our apartment, we can call a doctor. They can give you something for the pain, and something to accelerate the healing before we have to make our scheduled appearance at the tables, and at least you’ve given us a topic of conversation that isn’t death or weddings.” There’s a pause as Koschei rises, and he extends a hand to her, offering her help. 

Theta accepts it, and he pulls her to her feet. 

“Are you already tired of weddings, then?” There’s a gleam in her eye and a spark in her touch and she tilts her head as she eyes him.

“ _Hardly_.”


	44. Chapter 44

Quite unexpectedly, Theta finds herself in Koschei's clothes again. 

It was a fairly simple matter of practicality. With the added bulk and limited mobility provided by the brace on her wrist, it is significantly easier to don clothes that are slightly too big than tit is to don he clothes that Amy tailored specifically to her measurements, and though Theta knows that the exchange signifies little more than a reasonable solution to a simple problem, she feels significantly more awkward about it than she has in the past. The first time that she raided Koschei's wardrobe, it was a matter of revenge. The second time, it was a mistake. Both times, she was confronted with Koschei's stares and murmurs about how the gesture might be interpreted as a peace offering. 

They may have made peace with their morning, but that peace is fragile and needs time to blossom into something more concrete. Wearing his clothes gives her the distinct sense that she's rushing something that isn't meant to be rushed, cheating a system that isn't meant to be cheated. 

Perhaps the worst thing still is that Theta catches the eyes of other people lingering on her as she weaves through the crowd with her hand in Koschei's. She's in Koschei's colors — the burnt orange and the cool reds and the purple that cuts through the silk when you angle it the right way — and people have _noticed_. 

They turn to their neighbors and whisper about it. One woman with a tight, crooked smirk raises a glass in a toast that could be genuine or mocking in equal likelihood, and either possibility sends discomfort racing beneath the surface of Theta's skin. She averts her eyes almost immediately and hurries onward, trailing in Koschei's wake. 

"I don't like this," she declares once they finally settle into their chosen corner for the day, the high-topped white table from which they will hold their court. 

"What exactly would you like me to do about it?" Koschei asks, lifting his eyebrows in concern and rotating his attention entirely to her. It might easily be an aggressive and dismissive question in the wrong hands, but he treats it with the same calm with which he met her anger earlier in the day. 

Theta frowns. She ought to have an answer — indeed, she almost always keeps a running list of Koschei's missteps as compared to her expectations — but surprisingly, she surfaces with nothing at all. There's nothing that he _can_ do, really. The responses of others lie outside of his control, and it is far too late to undo the things that have already been done. 

"I don't know," she says honestly, turning her eyes towards the floor and scuffing the heel of her shoe against the marble. It leaves a streak of rubber in its wake. 

Koschei nods and turns his eyes back to the screen. 

Rennette hasn't been shown since the previous night. Theta does not doubt she's tucked away in a tunnel somewhere, doing something that the broadcast crew has deemed to be wholly uninteresting. Instead, the cameras are following a pack of tributes as they hunt for their prey, picking through sunlit ruins and harsh shadows in turn as they seek out other tributes. 

Violence far from immediate, but this is still not the sort of thing that Theta is willing to watch. There is an intent there, a hardness, that stirs the ghosts of her memories and begs her to run or cry or scream out in pain, but she can do none of those things in this setting. She can merely flag down a passing server and down two flutes of champagne in quick succession. 

Koschei raises an eyebrow at her, and she raises one back, challenging him to question her behavior. 

He doesn't, and a small, satisfied smile lifts the corners of her lips. It's nice to see him learning from his previous mistakes, even the small ones. If their little arrangement is ever going to work, it requires a little bit of give and take. Not demands, not one-sided exchanges, not veiled secrets and hidden conspiracies. They need a partnership on equal ground. She cannot be the only one learning hard lessons and stuck on the back foot and feeling the tip of a training sword pressed into her throat. It’s not sustainable. 

Her lips curl upwards at the thought, allowing herself to revel in it for a passing moment as her finger drags across the base of one of her empty glasses, trailing in an idle half-circle around its edge. 

There is a question scribed on Koschei’s face — she can see it lurking at the very edge of her vision — but he does not quite manage to find the will or the words to speak it before their little sanctuary is invaded.

A woman — dressed in pinks and blues and looking rather skin to a startled bird — settles on the edge of their table. Though Theta is sure that it is someone she has almost certainly met before — the Capitol may feel enormous at times, but its population is actually rather small — however, she has a difficult time placing the face. It may because the woman’s lashes are several inches long, sharply angled, and terribly distracting, but it is far more likely that it is just another creeping side-effect of Theta’s ongoing negligence. It’s difficult to remember what people look like when you insist on staring at the ground or into space or avoiding social events altogether. 

Thankfully, Theta is saved from the horror of trying to feign familiarity by the stranger’s stalwart interest in Koschei and Koschei alone. The invader hones in on him almost immediately, situating herself firmly on his half of the table and leaning forward to sink a set glossy, taloned nails into Koschei's arm. 

Theta is aware of the gesture, notes the desperation in it, but it does not bother her. She spent the morning being enraged at and terrified of Koschei in turn, and though the seas have leveled and the storm has calmed, she does not quite have it in her to summon so much as the faintest whiff of jealousy. On the contrary, she is almost _amused_ by it. Everyone in the Capitol and most of the people in the outlying Districts are well aware of the engagement by now, and even if she was unaware of the confessions that have taken place behind closed doors and the great lengths to which Koschei has gone in order to bargain for her favor, it would still seem entirely ridiculous to attempt to dig one’s claws into a person who is in the midst staging a very loud and very public love story. 

Theta leans back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other and lifting her chin ever so slightly as she observes them, waiting to see how this might unfold. 

Koschei’s eyes dare to dart to Theta once before the woman speaks, but his gaze says little, and in response, Theta merely tightens her lips into a smirk that suggests that he is on his own — for now, at least. She is willing to swoop in and rescue him should such a maneuver become necessary, but for now, she is extraordinarily interested in watching him sweat. Though the bulk of her anger has passed, she is not entirely devoid of the fire that Koschei has seen in her since the beginning — the flames that tend to dance with and curl against and feed into his until they escalate into a shared conflagration. 

“I never thought I’d see the day when Koschei Oakdown was off the market.”

It’s not an entirely unfamiliar opening, all things considered. As Koschei so aptly put it, death and weddings are the only things that people seem to speak to them about — two subjects that manage to toe the line between being so personal as to be invasive and so impersonal that it hardly deserves as second thought. Such is the way, in the Capitol. Blood and trauma and intimacy are drenched in gloss and glitter until they are rendered both palatable and utterly meaningless. Words and thoughts are bandied about with little thought to their meanings, and it often feels like as though she’s floating through a dream, operating on an entirely different plane from the strange people who surround her. 

Koschei slips into that other world almost effortlessly, with a false smile and a tilt of his head and a glitter in his eyes that outwardly speaks to charm and subtly contains utter revulsion. A year ago, she would not have been able to see the truth that slips through the cracks in the little way that he adjusts to move himself a bit closer to the wall that sits at their backs, but she’s gotten to know him better since then. 

And, most importantly, she’s begun to pay _attention_. 

“It would seem that few people did, yet they all assumed that they would be the one to do it,” Koschei says dryly and his hand reaches for the table as if looking for a drink that isn’t there. 

In a move that is at once both helpful and unhelpful, Theta slides one of her own empty glasses across the surface. 

Koschei fingers absentmindedly wrap around its stem, and the glass is halfway to his mouth before he looks down at it and frowns. He glances over at Theta, who merely shrugs and innocently turns her eyes up towards the ceiling and its blinding skylights.

The colorfully-dressed stranger, however, seems to miss the entire exchange, keeping her stare decidedly fixed upon Koschei and ignoring Theta’s presence altogether. “Well, there’s always time to change your mind,” she purrs. “A lot can change between now and then.” She sidles closer to him, and once again, there’s that imperceptible backwards lean. 

Over the speakers, there’s a shuffle in the Games, clash of steel on wood as blows are exchanged. It pulls at Theta’s attention — a thin yet strong thread that beckons her to turn her head against her better judgement — but she holds firm. She knows her limits, and now is not the time to involuntary stumble back into her own memories. Not while Koschei’s hands are occupied and there is a job to be done. 

With a sigh, Theta raises a hand to flag down another passing tray and grabs a third glass of champagne, but this time, it isn’t for her. 

She leans forward, rising up on the very tips of her toes as she sets it on Koschei’s side of the table. He neither notices nor looks at her. The empty glass is still in his hand as he says, “I would not have entered an engagement that I planned on leaving.” 

Back on her side of the table, Theta sniffs. It still bothers her that this relationship had not been their idea and instead was forced upon them in a severe miscalculation by a President that assumed that they were only capable of torturing each other and distracting them from their varied schemes and criticisms of the government and its activities. It’s not Koschei’s fault, but it bugs her all the same.

She wonders if it bothers him, too. If he dreamed of proper engagements and falling into love at his own pace.

“No one does, darling, but engagements end all the same.” Her voice is grating, and Theta shakes her hair away from her face as she pivots, eyes sweeping the crowd for something, anything else to look at. 

It’s a mistake. 

There’s a scream from the broadcast and a great cheer sweeps the room, along with a strangled “ _No!_ ” from a voice that Theta recognizes.

District 6 has fallen. 

Her stomach turns and she narrows her focus back to Koschei and his presumptuous captor, who once again seems to have overlooked the events occurring outside of their shared space. 

“If we aren’t going to discuss business, I would prefer it if you moved on, Ophelia.” Koschei’s words are crisp and to the point, and a touch more bristly than the tone that he typically employs in this setting. He’s getting testier, and Theta remains alert, ready to step in if necessary. 

The woman, Ophelia, leans forward, putting her hand on his chest. “This _is_ business.” 

Koschei’s head bumps against the wall, and elbow jostles the table, sending Theta’s newly procured glass to the floor where it shatters, bathing both his shoes and Ophelia’s shoes in bubbly liquid. 

Finally, Theta stirs. She circles around the table, not bothering to pick her way around the broken glass, which crunches beneath the soles of her shoes. 

“ _Hi_ ,” she says petulantly as she pries the pair apart with her hands in an attempt to slip between them. Ophelia’s grip on Koschei is hard to break, but Theta is persistent, and eventually, she manages to push her way in, putting a human shield between Koschei and those pink talons. 

Her partner’s body is warm against her back, and even through the many layers of their clothes, she is painfully aware of his presence. She ignores the goosebumps that spread across hidden skin and the tap of his hand against the inside of her wrist as if to signal his thanks. It takes another couple of seconds for the pent-up tension to finally leave his body, and when it does, his sigh of relief rolls against her. 

Theta, however, does not relax.

“I’m Theta. _Very_ pleased to meet you,” Theta continues in that unnaturally bright tone, extending a hand for the woman to shake. 

Ophelia merely eyes it suspiciously — her extravagant eyebrows lending an unshakeable degree of arrogant loftiness to the gesture — before taking a couple careful of wary steps backward. Ophelia’s hunt has been cut short, and it is clear that she knows that. To her, there is little point in lingering, but Theta has no interest in letting her go that easily. 

“I know who you are,” Ophelia says, tone clipped. 

“Brilliant. Love it when people know who I am. I forget sometimes. Terribly difficult to keep track of yourself, isn’t it? Best to let other people do it for you.” 

There’s another cry from the tv, and Theta finches. Koschei’s fingers lock around her good wrist, holding her steady, keeping her from falling back into the grasp of her memories. 

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean,” Ophelia with a small sniffle of disinterest. 

Theta takes a step forward — not far enough to break Koschei’s anchoring touch to her wrist, but far enough to break the touch of his chest on her back and the tangle of their legs. “Most people don’t. Just a thing I’ve noticed. Must not be thinking hard enough. I’m an idiot sometimes, me.” 

Her eyes flash and her jaw sets in a firm line of determination. 

“It really is lucky that I managed to net myself a clever tribute this year, and that I have a colleague who’s very good at his job, but you know that already,” Theta continues. The last time that she tried to convince someone to fall in line with her plans, she had borrowed Koschei’s tone and Koschei’s words, but this time, it’s all her. “Did you know that it’s been 40 years since a tribute Rennette’s age made it this far in the Games?” 

It’s a fact that she made up entirely out of whole cloth with no regard for the truth, but she doubts that this woman is the sort of person who concerns herself with memorizing statistics and keeping track of the bloody and storied history of the Games. Most people in the Capitol don’t. It’s about the spectacle for them, and nothing else. 

Ophelia shakes her head. “I didn’t.” 

Theta can tell that she has her interest now, and she spins her lie a bit tighter. “If she won, she’d be the youngest victor ever. That would be one for the record books, isn’t it? Something that will be replayed for decades to come, and wouldn’t you be so proud to be a part of that? You could brag for years about how you bet on the underdog, how you saved her at a crucial moment by providing your sponsorship, how that record really belongs to you.” 

Koschei’s fingers creep down to her hand, brushing over the sensitive skin of her palm before lacing their fingers together. 

She may be the sort of person who listens at doorways, but she has his support and his approval, and she may be wearing his clothes, but she is still herself. 

“We’ve got a space open for you, if you’re interested, and we try to maintain a tight relationship with our sponsors.” That’s a lie, too, but it plays on the woman’s lust and greed and draws her closer. 

Ophelia’s wide eyes flit to the edges of the room, as if making sure that no one else plans to sweep in and steal the opportunity out from beneath her feet. 

“You have a deal.”

It takes several minutes to close it properly, and Koschei has to clear his throat and step in to help when Theta bungles both the terms and the paperwork, but when it’s finally done and Ophelia’s nagging presence finally exits their space, his hands find either side of Theta’s face as their eyes meet.

“Thank you,” he says. Something genuine floods his words and his gaze, and Theta wrinkles her nose in response. 

“Could’ve stepped in sooner, I suppose.” 

She focuses on a spot on his cheek instead of his stare, conscious of the slight flush that creeps up her chest and across her neck, running beneath his touch at the inexorable pace of the incoming tide. 

“Didn’t expect you to help at all, given the morning we had.” 

Theta shrugs. “Well, you didn’t look like you had it handled. Besides, I saw an opportunity.” She dances around the admission that she doesn’t really want to see him suffer, that she likes him enough to want to help when he needs it, even in the wake of her shame and her anger and her rage. 

There’s a pause as he sinks his teeth into his lip, contemplating a question that he’s surprisingly never asked before, “Can I kiss you?” 

Nerves flutter in her stomach, the flush deepens, and her eyes once again find purchase in the skylights above them. “I suppose.”

His hands find her hips and her back finds the wall as his mouth seeks out hers. This time, it’s not a kiss for the benefit of any onlookers — not a story they’re telling or a magic trick they’re selling — just a quiet moment between two people who are desperately trying to make love work in impossible circumstances. 


	45. Chapter 45

By the time Rennette appears on camera, night has fallen over the Arena.

Koschei and Theta moved away from their chosen corner hours ago, choosing to instead take up residence on a sofa. They take turns nodding off while the other keeps a wary eye out for both developments in the Games and interruptions by people who wish to speak to them. It is not the most polite way to suffer through a social evening, however, weeks of poor habits, frantic schedules, and overwhelming emotions have finally caught up with them. It takes every ounce of Theta’s determination to remain awake during her appointed shifts, and she runs her fingers through Koschei’s hair and over his clothes just to focus on something — anything — tangible enough to keep herself from slipping out of wakefulness.

If Koschei notices the restless sweep of her hands, he declines to comment on it, and perhaps that is for the best. Theta tends to be at her most flighty during the moments in which she feels exposed. Vulnerability stirs fear and embarrassment in turn, chases her out the door and deeper into herself and further away from him. It is far better to simply exist, to be allowed space in which she can acclimate to this new world at her own pace, rather than at whatever speed he chooses to force upon her.

She glances up at the broadcast only occasionally, checking just to see which tributes active. Aside from the murder earlier in the day, there has been surprisingly little movement. Everyone is hiding, formulating their own plans, adjusting strategies. With Rennette being so quiet, Theta and Koschei decided to sit upon the funds from Ophelia’s sponsorship for a little while. Better to save it for a time of need than to waste them on a bottle of water or a packet of food that might not even be needed.

After a while, Koschei stirs. Theta’s fidgeting hands withdraw, returning to her own lap as she twines her fingers together and turns her eyes towards the ceiling. Stars scatter the sky above them, barely visible beyond the harsh glare that cuts across the glass of the skylights. What she wouldn’t give to be back home, in the open, lying back against the grass and worrying about nothing other than tracing paths between the stars with a single finger, recalling the stories that name the constellations and the folktales that are passed from generation to generation within the districts.

Koschei straightens, rotating his wrist to check the time.

“How long until we can leave?” Theta asks, stifling a yawn against the back of her hand.

Koschei frowns, running his first two fingers beneath the cuff of his shirt as he tugs it down to cover the watch. “Too long,”

Theta assumed that the answer would run along those lines, but she is no less disappointed for it. The days spent here in the betting rooms are the longest days of all — longer even than the training days. They consist of extraordinarily long bouts of nothingness interrupted only by small flurries of horrifying action. At this time of the night, even the dull questions about weddings and the brace on her broken wrist have faded away into silence. Everyone who cares about those things has already said their piece, and they, too, are likely suffering from flagging energy. Many of the elite only stay this late to update their bets if they need to, but the mentors are required to remain here until the tables close.

Theta swings her feet up onto the stretch of cushion beside her and leans back against Koschei’s side, settling in for her turn to nap. It takes them a moment to get comfortable. Koschei moves his arm to better accommodate her, hand coming to rest on her abdomen. Much like him, Theta, too, declines to mention it, but it stirs a quiet thrill in her stomach as a hundred nervous dragonflies take flight with their humming wings.

For a while, Theta straddles the space between sleeping and wakefulness. Her eyes are heavy and her mind is clouded, but she retains some small awareness of the outside world. She can feel Koschei’s thumb sketching idle circles against the fabric of her shirt, hear the vague murmur of voices whenever people venture too near to them, see the flash behind her eyelids whenever the broadcast cuts back to Caesar’s studio. Though she would prefer to be properly asleep, it is better than forcing herself to be awake, and she floats in that dark, uncertain limbo for as long as she can.

A high-pitched scream eventually pulls her out of it.

A icy rush of panic cascades through Theta’s veins, stirring fear in her belly and trapping breath in her lungs. She bolts upright, and Koschei’s response is almost immediate. He raises a hand to either side of her face, keeping her still, reducing her world to him and only him. Peppermint washes through her nose and across her tongue, and Koschei’s voice is a quiet murmur as he says, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” But every couple of seconds, he glances beyond her, fixing his gaze on a screen, and she can see the warped reflection of the broadcast reflected back at her in the surface of his eyes.

There are no further screams, but the echo of that terrible, terrible rings in Theta’s ears and lures unwanted thoughts into the front of her mind where they lurk like a pack of wolves, ready to pounce upon her weakness at a moment’s notice.

It takes a dozen stilted breaths through her nose for her to find enough air to speak. “Rennette?” The name tears against the tight walls of her throat as it leaves her body, torn to ribbons on the sharpness of a tongue that no longer feels entirely under her control.

Koschei’s gaze darts back to her, and he nods.

The second question is worse. It stumbles and cracks and barely resembles a word at all. “Dead?”

“No.”

Koschei’s breaths are steady as they wash over her skin, and she tries to find peace in those waves, tries to mirror his pace, tries to keep herself from falling any further into the fear that threatens to drown her. By the time she speaks again, she manages to be a little bit clearer, a little bit more confident, a little bit more like her usual self. “What’s happening?”

Koschei’s teeth sink into his lower lip as he considers the answer. “Mutts.”

Theta’s sense of alarm worsens. She thought that Ushas wouldn’t directly attack Rennette, thought that the Head Gamemaker was on their side, thought the only thing that they needed to fear was the other tributes. The deployment of genetically modified animals into the Arena runs directly against that understanding in a way that she cannot reconcile. “I thought you said Ush —“

Koschei cuts Theta short with a peck on the lips, and her words are lost in his mouth. “Not here, love. Not here,” he reminds her, casting a nervous glance around the room to make sure no one was near enough to overhear Theta’s slip. One hand finds her fingers, squeezing lightly while the other circles around to her side, tapping out a restless, anxious pattern against her ribcage.

Theta looks down at those hands as he turns Koschei turns his attention back towards the broadcast again, aware of the rush of her pulse in her ears and her mind’s seeming inability to parse Caesar’s frantic commentary in the right order. “Treat…Creatures…Three…Terrifying.” She runs the fingers of her free hand over Koschei’s — counting lines and spots and callouses in order to tune out the noise. Her curiosity begs her to listen, but her good sense knows that it will only make her more and more afraid, cast her into more and more uncertainty. It is better to wait for Koschei’s explanation, better to know for certain than to try to piece it together herself through the shattered lenses of exhaustion, trauma, and wildly oscillating inattention.

The wait is agonizing. Theta unlaces her fingers from Koschei’s and begins to curl his into a fist, mirroring the lesson that he taught her in that star-studded room at a party that seems like it took place decades ago rather than a smattering of days and weeks and hours. Either consciously or unconsciously, he lets her toy with him, relaxes his muscles enough to lower his resistance. As soon as she shapes his hand into a fist, she undoes it and does it again — over and over and over.

She is vaguely aware of the bustle of noise beyond her shallow sphere of attention, vaguely aware of the times his breath catches in his throat, vaguely aware of a flinch that threatens to yank his hand free of her own, but she does not allow those impressions to intrude too far upon her. She is keeping herself grounded in the only way that she knows how, in the only way that is available to her at the moment.

Theta has no way of gauging the passage of time, no way of knowing whether it is seconds or minutes or hours before Koschei finally settles back into the couch with a sigh and a roll of his neck. She only knows that she’s not really back in the present until his hand moves towards the back of her neck and his face is against hers and a single phrase spins from his lips to her own. “She’s alive.”

It should be a relief, and it is, in a way. Alive is better than dead — alive is _always_ better than dead — but alive is not the same as fine. Alive doesn’t mean okay. Alive means something _happened_.

“Alive doesn’t mean okay. Is she okay?”

Her eyes seek out Koschei, green grappling with brown in the tense space between them.

“She can be. Are —“ There’s a pause and a quick inhale as Koschei collects himself before continuing on — “Are you okay enough to stand? Can you come with me to the kiosks? She needs medicine. You should send it. It’s your sponsorship, after all.”

Worry flutters in Theta’s heart and catches at the back of her throat. “I don’t —“ she trails off, fighting for the right words to say, the right question to ask.

“You don’t what?” There’s a hint of impatience nagging at his tone, battling with the assumed calm that has so thoroughly ruled him since their fight in the bedroom.

Theta doubles back, reconsidering her chosen course. “What does she need medicine for? What mutts? What happened, _Koschei_?”

The name burns on her tongue, and perhaps it is cruel of her to press the point, cruel of her to force him to recount it. Guilt and regret claw at her insides and slink against the underside of her skin, and she pulls her head away from him, shrugging off his touch as she looks at the wall of screens.

A creature floats through the ruins —ghostly, demented, mouth open in a silent scream. Cobwebs cling to its cloak, making it more visible in the darkness and reflecting back the sickly blue-green glow that emanates from its core. Mutts are usually animals — dogs or snakes or large cats. They aren’t usually humanoid, and that dissonance makes it all the harder for her to absorb what she’s seeing, to feel the true impact of it, to chase away the initial shock and truly comprehend the sight.

A logo flies across the screen as the broadcast loops back to show the replay.

Theta should look away, and she knows that. She feels Koschei’s hand tighten on her shoulder and hears him speak into her ear, but she is paralyzed by her intense need to feel involved, to feel like she can have an impact even when she can’t.

The camera fixes on the Rennette of a few moments ago. She is dirty and tired and there’s a small scrape on her cheekbone, but her eyes are bright and her jaw is still tightly set with the same determination that Theta glimpsed on that last morning when they parted. There’s a single moment of peace, a single moment spent surveying the ruins and scrounging between the rocks for something useful, a single moment before Rennette is made aware of the horrors that have been unleashed upon the Arena.

It is not long before the ghastly abomination rises out of the dark, not long before Rennette glances over her shoulder, not long before her hand grips the handle of her knife and tugs it from her belt and she starts to run.

She is slower than the creature, and it gains on her quickly.

It extends a hand, draws closer, and eventually, it strikes — running jagged nails down her arm.

Those talons shred both her skin and the flesh beneath it.

A scream rips from the girl’s lungs, the very scream that chilled Theta to the bone and roused her from sleep. Blood runs in rivulets — dripping down her fingers, splashing onto the dusty, moonlit ground below, and leaving a trail in her wake — but Rennette does not stop running. She scrambles over rocks and around corners. She ducks into a tunnel. She takes turn after turn and still it follows her, mouth open in a silent, dreadful scream.

Rennette’s steps get smaller and smaller, her breaths get shallower and shallower, her pace gets slower and slower, and eventually, she is backed into a dead end. Frantic, blood-drenched fingers move over the rocks, desperately searching for the salvation of a hidden window or a secret door. She finds nothing.

With the knife still gripped in her good hand, she turns to face the demon. There’s a second of hesitation as she scans it, looking for weaknesses, trying to figure out where to strike. Then with a great grunt of effort, she hurls herself upon it, digging her knife into its eye socket.

The creature twitches once, and then goes still.

Rennette stays on top of the fallen horror for a while — panting, shaking, bleeding — before reeling backwards and collapsing against that wall, holding her shredded arm tightly to her chest as tears stream down her face.

The logo flies across the screen again and disappears.

Theta’s own arm twinges in sympathy — an itch that runs down the extensive length of her scars — and Koschei stands and circles around to once again situation himself in her line of sight.

“Now, Theta. She needs us now.”

Theta feels somewhat outside of herself as she stands, but she still manages to do it. Koschei supports her one step as a time as they cross the room, walks her through the process as they order what they need, allows her dictate the note that will be tucked into the canister.

The results are almost immediate.

On the screen, there’s a buzzing of a drone as it speeds through the tunnels, and a clang of metal as the machine deposits its contents to the stone floor beside Rennette before speeding off again.

It takes Rennette a while to open it one-handed. She has to wedge it behind her knee and use her good hand to twist the lid free, but a container of medicine and a note eventually spill out onto the floor. Rennette attacks the medicine first, slathering it onto her fingers and wincing as she works it into the angry, oozing gashes, but it almost immediately spurs healing, grafting the skin together with raging red, puckered lines and staunching the bleeding. From experience, Theta knows that it still hurts, but at least the immediate threat of death is gone. At least there’s hope.

After a taking a few beats of rest and recovery, Rennette’s fingers fumble for the message, breaking the seal and folding it open as her eyes scan the typed text. It’s a one-line reminder, slick enough to make it past the censors and avoid suspicion.

Remember all the tools available to you. - Theta

Rennette’s chin lifts as she seeks out the camera that she knows must be watching her. It takes her a moment to find it — to see the glint of an artificial eye peering out at her from amongst the shadows — but once she sets her eyes upon it, she nods once.

Message received.


	46. Chapter 46

While Theta is awake, night is an arduous and never-ending affair, but as soon as she falls asleep, it seems to end in a blink and a heartbeat. She no longer has time to fall deeply enough to slip into nightmares; there is only slumbering darkness and waking exhaustion in alternating shifts. Perhaps a part of her is grateful for the respite, but another part of her longs for a return to normalcy, begs for a reminder that the Earth still turns beneath her feet, that she is still the same person, and that the sun will always rise.

As always, she wakes slightly earlier than Koschei, who tends to cling to rest as though it represents his final salvation. He grunts as Theta untangles her limbs from his and rotates onto his opposite side, but he does not open his eyes or call after her as she pads to the bathroom. That is perfectly fine with Theta. She is not presented many opportunities to be alone these days, and though she has learned to find comfort in Koschei’s presence, she does still need time to herself, time to figure herself out, time to exist without the pressure of a hundred uncertainties descending upon her.

She turns the heat of the shower all the way up until clouds of steam slink against her skin and obscure the mirrors. Though she does not technically _need_ to take her wrist brace off before entering the shower, she does anyway. The brace has pressed lines into her skin, deeper and more wrinkled than the network of scars that overlap beneath them. She winces as she sets the dreadful thing aside, acutely aware of the pain that comes alongside newfound mobility, however, she does note that the pain has already vastly improved from the previous morning.

Once the water is hot enough for her tastes, she steps into its stream, closing the door behind her. A quiet hiss snakes through her teeth as she acclimates to the temperature, but the discomfort passes relatively quickly, leaving nothing but comfortable numbness in its wake. As the water falls over her, it washes away the remnants of her makeup from the previous day, the gooseflesh that haunts her skin, the pain that plagues both her wrist and her heart.

For a while, she allows herself to stop thinking — feigning ignorance to the world that exists beyond this small rectangle of falling water — but the longer she stands still, the more unwanted intrusions creep towards the front of her mind.

Theta cannot shake the image of Rennette facing down the mutt, the horror of that gaping mouth, the terrible moment of hesitation when Rennette seemed to wonder whether it was she or the creature that had died. The hot water dripping down Theta’s own arm feels more and more like a sticky coat of blood, and when she glances down at it, she cannot help but think about how long Rennette’s scars will linger should she be lucky enough to escape the Arena with her life.

Theta hides her own scars almost constantly, burying them beneath layers upon layers of fabric and allowing no one but Amy and Koschei to see them. The general public has not seen them in years, and even the most vile members of the Capitol’s elite have learned not to inquire, lest they find themselves on the wrong side of both her infamous wrath and her notoriously sharp tongue. Of course, there are sometimes small glimpses — the shifting of a collar, the turn of a cuff, the rhinestones that traced out their paths beneath the glimmering lights of a party — but for the most part, they are a shameful secret. They are too tightly tied with the sins that Theta committed to be comfortably displayed.

However, there have recently been brief flickers of moments when the scars have verged on being tolerable, moments where Koschei’s fingers traced out their patterns, moments when he reminded her that she was given an impossible choice with no right answer, moments when he could have pried into her history and her habits and instead chose not to.

If Rennette survives, Theta desperately wants her to live _with_ her scars rather than _despite_ of them. Theta wants Rennette to have the kind of peace that she has only ever glimpsed in scattered bits and pieces. She does not want her to blindly follow in the steps of her stumbling, suffering, failing mentors.

When the water starts to grow cold, Theta cuts off the flow and steps out of the shower and into the plush embrace of a waiting towel. Careful to avoid jostling her injured wrist overmuch, she wrings most of the moisture from her hair and sweeps shimmering droplets from the branching network of her scars.

Once she’s reasonably dry, she slips on a robe, dons the brace, and reenters the bedroom, making for the shared closet in which she and Koschei stow their clothing. She is finally able to locate the light switch that had so thoroughly eluded her the last time she ventured into the space, and steps inside, closing the door behind her so that she does not disturb Koschei’s sleep. 

She runs her fingers over the rows of fine fabrics without bothering to discriminate between the items that belong to Koschei and the items that belong to her. Her nails — manicured by necessity and not choice — snag on sleeves as they pass through her fingers. Normally, she would find solace in those sleeves, hide herself away beneath them, keep her scars and her past and her trauma away from prying eyes, but in this moment, the very thought of doing so cuts across her tongue with an unmistakable amount of bitterness. Rennette deserves better. Koschei deserves better. _She_ deserves better.

Her touch hovers over a waistcoat the color of the misty morning sky, cut through with rainbows that grace on its buttons and glimmer in the hidden lining. Presumably it is hers, if only based on the characteristic color scheme that seems to be designed to both complement and contrast Koschei’s, but she has neither noticed it nor worn it before. Her relationship with clothing is largely ambivalent and revolves around function rather than form. Though there are outfits that she hates more than others and certain materials that she finds more comfortable than others, she rarely advocates on behalf of her own personal taste. She does not tend to exercise preference or interject opinions, simply allowing Amy to do with her wardrobe what she will.

But this? She _likes_ this.

The fabric shimmers slightly as she runs the pad of her thumb over its surface, bending the reflective strands and making it look like it might be woven from liquid light itself. Something about it sparks hope where previously there lurked nothing aside from a dull, hollow fear that threatened to devour her from the inside out.

Theta pulls it free from its hanger and begins to root around for a pair of trousers. Not for the first time, she wishes that the closet was arranged by way of entire outfits and not in bits and pieces, that she could find the right pants in the same place as the waistcoat. Lacking that, it takes her an embarrassingly long time to settle on a pair of dark blue trousers, and even once she does, she is still continuing to second-guess the choice. For a moment, she is tempted to crack the door open, to throw a shoe at Koschei and to ask for help, but she doesn’t want to be an inconvenience, doesn’t want to create a problem where there isn’t one. 

As Theta tugs it over her shoulders, the fabric of the waistcoat feels slightly cold against her bare skin, a far distance from the warmth of her usual layers. Although she is not yet the captive of real audience — only serving the prying eyes of star-studded and sun-drenched fabrics — she already feels the numbing chill of exposure. In a moment of hesitation, she begins to wonder why she is doing this in the first place. It is not as though Rennette will see her, not as though the rumors will be strong enough to reach the Arena, but it feels important all the same.

She grabs a random pair of shoes and tugs them onto her feet before opening the door and crossing back into the bedroom. Koschei has vacated his spot on the bed, leaving behind a tangle of bedsheets and the faint impression of his weight. A slight sigh of relief trickles between her lips as some of the tension leaves her shoulders. She is not quite sure if she’s ready to be seen — ready to be judged — even by the eyes of someone who has laid eyes upon her scars before.

However, that relief is incredibly short-lived.

With her still-damp hair skating over her shoulders, she turns back towards the bathroom and sees Koschei framed in the doorway. For a long time, he stands there in complete and utter silence, almost entirely motionless aside from the kneading of his thumb and forefinger against the palm of his opposite hand. His gaze flicks from her arm to her face, unable to focus on a single point.

Theta feels as though she should say something — feels as though she should run or babble or do anything to distract from the fear and vulnerability that surge through her — but she cannot seem to either find her tongue or lift her feet from the floor.

In the end, Koschei speaks first. “That’s bold, even for you.”

Doubt flutters in Theta’s stomach and throbs in her heart. “What do you mean?”

There’s a small shrug of Koschei’s shoulders, and he takes a step forward, not towards her, but towards the closet. She can see the effort that it takes for him to peel his eyes away from her, the determination that grinds his front teeth into his bottom lip, the way his hand shakes as he turns the knob.

“It just is,” he says as he slips inside the wardrobe and out of sight.

It is a far from satisfying explanation, but simply on merit of not being the worst possible response, it does succeed in quieting some of the racing of Theta’s heart and chasing the shame from her cheeks.

With the pressure of his stare gone, she steps back into the bathroom to try to tame her wet hair into something that will not make Amy cringe should they happen to cross paths. She leaves the door open as she does so, and after a moment, she hears Koschei’s voice rise in a pointed question, “Is this about Rennette?”

Theta’s eyes slide sideways as she works at a knot in her hair with a metal comb. “Sort of.” It is always difficult to share truths, but if she expects him to be honest with her, then the least she can do is return the favor. “It’s a useful reminder to our prospective sponsors that she could still win.” There’s a pause as her gaze roams back to the mirror, and her tongue works a thought against the point of a single canine. “It feels unfair to hide them. Unfair to Rennette. Unfair to me.”

Once her hair is free of tangles, she twists it into a small bun at the back of her neck, disguising the dampness and keeping it off of her shoulders.

Quite unexpectedly, Koschei’s reflection appears over her shoulder. He looks more disheveled, more caught off guard than she’s ever seen him, and he has not yet bothered to button his shirt front. Whenever they change in the same space, he always turns his back to her, and she’s never gotten a chance to look at him properly, never gotten a chance to run her eyes over the scars that have marked him ever since his own Games. There is a twisting slice on his abdomen that she learned about from hearsay and the scattered year-over-year coverage of his highlights. There is a glimmering line on his ribcage, in the approximate place that he, himself, threatened to stab her. She recognizes that one, too, is aware of the moment when another tribute snatched a knife from Koschei’s belt and turned it on him. However, there is one scar that surprises her — an angry knot just above his heart.

Theta doesn’t have to inquire about its story. She is familiar enough with the many woes that plague a victor to hazard a guess as its cause.

She turns to face him properly, and for once she isn’t hopping up on the counter to buy herself a couple of extra inches and leverage an advantage. This moment is built upon equal ground, scars exposed beneath the a mixture of unflattering fluorescent lights and the scattered rays of early morning sun that sneak through the window.

Koschei’s breath washes over her — smelling not like peppermint, but like _him_ — and hesitantly, she reaches out and raises a hand to that previously unmapped scar. Her touch is kind and gentle, and she can feel the texture beneath her fingertips, chart the change in topography, imagine the pain and terror that came with it.

There’s a brightness in her eyes — born both of tears and of sudden understanding —as she looks up again, locking her gaze with his own. 

“You meant it,” she says. The words snag on raw edges, but she keeps talking anyway. “You meant every word of it. In the elevator, on the roof, at Caesar’s — you told me those things because you _knew_.”

Koschei swallows once, and Theta’s eyes fall to track the movement in his throat.

With a sharp inhale, Koschei’s hand finds hers and he guides it away, stepping to one side in order to get a clear view of the mirror as he begins to do up his buttons. He does not reply, but Theta is acutely aware that this is a moment that exists beyond words, beyond blustering bravado and the smooth charm that he uses as a front when the cameras are on and people are watching.

Instead of meeting her vulnerability with critique or judgement or laughter, he met it with his own.

And perhaps normal isn’t enough for her anymore. Perhaps she needs the Earth to stop spinning and her identity to shift and the sun to alter its course across the sky.

Theta’s fingers flex as she stares down at the place where her network of scars meets the brace on her wrist.

“Thank you,” she says.

There’s a long moment of silence before Koschei finally musters up a quiet response. “You’re very welcome, love.”


	47. Chapter 47

The streets of the Capitol are paved with light and sound.

There’s a projection on every building showcasing the ongoing Hunger Games. The panting of a pack of tributes fills the air and worms its way beneath Theta’s skin, grinding against her raw nerves, and compelling her to restlessly shift her weight from foot to foot as she and Koschei stand on the side of the road, ready to flag down a cab. When Koschei had asked her whether or not she wanted to walk, she had chosen the cab with the newfound exposure of her scars in mind, wanting to delay the stares as long as possible, but she is beginning to regret that choice now. She would much rather be moving. Moving feels _productive_ , but it also feels like running away, and she resolved to _stop_ running.

At her side, Koschei’s attention is fixed on a thought invisibly suspended in midair. His hand is lifted at chin height, fingers curled in the rough approximation of a question mark as his thumb rubs idle circles against the pad of his middle finger. He, too, is antsy and fidgeting, though Theta suspects that the cause of his distress is slightly different than hers.

Theta draws a few feet closer to him, about to inquire after the cause of his distress when he turns to her and asks rather suddenly, “Do you want to run an errand with me?”

She blinks once, surprised. She expected some reflection on her bared arm or the state of the current Games or a query about the current state of their relationship, not something as casual and oddly enigmatic as requesting company on an errand.

She is tempted to agree without further clarification, but the sound of the tributes onscreen nags at both her ears and her attention, reminding her of their commitment to the horrible gambling rooms and the obligation that lies therein. At the outset of this year’s Games, she and Koschei had resolved to be present and alert for the entirety of the Games, to serve their sole tribute to the best of their ability. Even their plans for rebellion are inextricably linked with Rennette’s success as a victor. It seems both foolish and negligent to embark upon an errand now, when there is so much else in need of doing.

Her hesitation both precedes and undercuts a careful, suspicious, monosyllabic question. “ _Why_?”

Koschei’s eyes fix on her face for only a moment before they dart around both the street and the buildings that surround them. Theta’s gaze follows his, looking where he is looking, trying to infer the thought process that so often eludes her. It does not take her long to grasp it, but the revelation is not one that speaks to deep understanding or particular insight. Rather, it reflects a habit that he borrowed from _her_. Koschei is scanning the eaves and corners of buildings, the top of doorways, the reflective glass of the windows, seeking out any cameras that might track and record their conversations, sending them off for government review.

As expected, there are dozens.

There are terribly few places in which they can speak plainly without fear of surveillance — both here and in their home district — and they have just left one such sanctuary.

Theta runs her tongue over her lips and feels her heart sinking towards the pit of her stomach. Even before Koschei speaks, she knows that she will not get a plain answer from him, and she also knows that it is both foolish and dangerous to ask for one. So instead of waiting to see which lie he might use to dodge the issue, she interrupts his answer and doubles back. “Okay. Love an errand. Where are we going?”

As she speaks, her hand sneaks towards him, closing the distance between them, twining her fingers with his own.

Koschei brow contracts slightly as his gaze moves between her eyes. Theta doesn’t think that this nervousness is born of distrust, rather, it seems akin to the nervousness that runs through his body in moments of intimacy, born from the doubt, fear, and disbelief that so often seem to plague him where his long-unrequited love is concerned. The realization soothes some of her own tension, adding yet another stitch to the lengthy line of small efforts that seek to close both her open wounds and the longstanding rift that lies between them.

She offers him a small smile — tight and fleeting, a genuine performance meant for both of them — and Koschei takes a deep breath, tearing his eyes away from her and focusing on the task at hand.

“I need to get something from a friend,” he says, speaking as directly as the lurking cameras and listening mechanical ears allow.

Theta nods and steps ever so slightly aside, keeping her hand locked in his, ready to follow wherever he will lead.

“Let’s go then.”

Koschei draws another breath. He casts a glance first back at the waiting road and then upwards at the pack of tributes projected across the side of the buildings before finally taking that first step forward. Theta willingly follows him into the unknown, curious about what may lie on the other side.

They weave through alleys and sidestreets, cutting through the parlor of an abandoned house that was left to rot after the war and across the floors of no less than three distinct shops. A woman who looks more cat than human nods at them as they pass through her tattoo parlor, and it takes Theta so long to comprehend the sight that she fails to return the gesture, or indeed, to do anything except rudely stare. Every time that she dares to think that they must have finally reached their intended destination — that there is nowhere else to walk and no other place to go — Koschei keeps trudging onward, dragging her along with him,

With every step, the ubiquitous sights and sounds of the Games follow them. Now that they are out of the city center, the broadcast is no longer on the side of every building, but it is still plastered on most of the street corners. The soundtrack of muttering and ragged breaths and Caesar’s lilting commentary dog their footsteps. They never manage to flee the noise entirely. Every time they leave the range of one speaker, another seems to swell to take its place. When the President made the viewing of the Games a compulsory activity, he made sure to establish an infrastructure that ensured that the practice be carried out.

It is difficult not to think about how terrible the sight and sounds of her own Games must have been in these tight, busy, domineering streets, how bright that flash must have seemed even in daylight, how loudly the screams of those children must have been as they echoed through the Capitol — haunting streets that they were never privileged enough to walk.

Theta kills the invasive thought with a shake of her head and a sharp inhale through her nose. Koschei hears the sharp breath and glances back over his shoulder, checking to make sure that she is okay. Theta turns her eyes away from him, blinking away the muddy beginnings of her tears. Koschei has seen her cry enough times over these past weeks. He doesn’t need to see it again, not when there are errands to be run and tasks to be done.

It is four more blocks before they reach a door set into the side of an alley, and though she expects it to be just another shortcut through a shady business or a friendly home, it opens onto a set of stairs that descend beneath the ground.

“Hurry,” Koschei says, the word quick. His gaze roves nervously around their surroundings as he holds the door open for her.

Theta takes a moment to question both Koschei’s intentions and the circumstances. Despite the wrinkles in their relationship, he has demonstrated over and over again that he deserves her trust. They have a common enemy, a common goal, and a mutual adoration of each other. That should be enough, and yet, she constantly finds herself questioning her own logic and her own instincts. She trusts him implicitly, but she doesn’t always trust herself. Perhaps she should not have come here. Perhaps she should have hopped in a cab and gone to the familiar horror, rather than towards whatever errand-laden nightmare lurks beneath the streets of the Capitol.

“Theta,” Koschei says again, voice increasingly frantic. Finally, Theta takes a deep breath and plunges past him and into the waiting darkness.

She hears the door slam shut behind her as Koschei follows in her wake.

It takes a few minutes for her eyes to adjust. There is light here — artificial, yellow, and frightfully dim beneath the pressure of low electrical current. A putrid smell assaults her senses, and her nose wrinkles in response. It takes her a moment to pinpoint the source. Standing water dominates the tunnel, traversable only by way of a particularly brave and foolish swimmer or the slim elevated paths that cling to either wall.

Koschei brushes past her and heads towards the rightmost path, moving with the confidence of someone who has travelled here a thousand times before. “Don’t touch the water,” he says, casting the warning back over his shoulder before turning his eyes ahead again.

Theta, who was indeed about to step forward and get a better look at the water, moves closer the curved wall and begins eyeing their surroundings with newfound suspicion. “Why?” Almost immediately, her mind jumps to an endless list of possibilities, imagining thousands monsters that might lurk in the depths of the dark and foul pool.

Koschei merely shrugs. “It’s not clean.”

With her nightmares newly shattered, Theta jogs to catch up with him, hovering just behind his shoulder as he leads the way deeper into the tunnels. “Are we in the Transfer?”

“Yes,” Koschei answers. The word echoes off both the walls and the surface of the water.

The Transfer is a network of tunnels that exists below the Capitol, and it is traditionally used to move goods from place to place within the city. Rumor has it that there used to be underground trains racing along on electrified tracks, but if such things existed, they fell into disuse and disrepair a long time ago. Now trucks and trailers are the primary mode of transportation, and judging by the state of this particular branch, Theta cannot help but wonder if the system is even accessible anymore.

Years ago, when she first heard about the Transfer, she spent weeks trying to find a way in, convinced that it would be a decent place to hide away from the overwhelming noise and flashing lights of the Capitol and find a piece of home, but she failed to locate an entrance.

A couple weeks ago, she might have been livid that Koschei found a way down here before she did, but now, she’s simply indifferent. Perhaps if she had made friends with the right people at the right time, she, too, would have been shown a way in.

“Don’t people work down here? Aren’t you worried that someone might see us?”

Koschei shakes his head. “Not in this section. These tunnels have been abandoned for decades. Too much flooding.”

A thought creases Theta’s brow, digging a deep furrow just above the bridge of her nose. “Is thatthe reason why the neighborhood above us is abandoned?”

“Part of it. People also think this section of the city is haunted.”

They round a corner and reach a set of branching pathways, connected by a precious series of wooden planks that act as makeshift bridges. Koschei crosses with practiced, confident ease. Theta, however, is much more careful. She places one shoe in front of the other with great care, careful not to fall. She doesn’t trust the wood not to give way beneath her feet. Koschei waits for her on the other side, impatiently tapping his foot, and when Theta finally reaches solid ground and releases a single, pent-up breath, he sets off again.

“Why do they think it’s haunted?”

“People used to hear noises in the night. Garbled words, near-human screeches. Local officials did their best to quell the rumors, but once stories take hold, they are difficult to discourage, especially when they are rooted in truth.”

Theta senses his caginess and lunges toward it, seeking to share in his knowledge. “What was the truth?”

The artificial light shines on the planes and angles of Koschei’s face, gilding his profile in warm, pulsating gold as a small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “Ushas has always been fond of her experiments. Sometimes they’ve been known to get loose.”

It is nearly as elusive as his first statement, and indignance loads Theta’s tongue with a dozen bullets ready to tear through his defenses and strike him down with her impatience. Before she has a chance to speak, however, her target comes to a halt in front of an unassuming metal door and turns his steady gaze towards her.

“Don’t touch anything,” he warns.

Theta raises her eyebrows, gaze flitting between her fiancé and the door. “Why? Is it not clean either?” The words are dry and abrasive, and they deepen the cut of Koschei’s snide smile.

“Oh, it’s very clean. It’s just not safe.”

Theta’s eyes roll towards the ceiling and her hands plunge into the deep pockets of her trousers. “You know me. I’ve never touched anything that’s not mine.”

It’s a lie of the highest magnitude, and they both know that, but Koschei opens the door all the same.

Together, they step into a space that almost resembles a conference room. Chairs circle an ovular table, and on the whole, it appears to be rather unremarkable. Theta bristles, suddenly aware that he might have been stringing her along in order to toy with her, that this might be a grand adventure with absolutely no payoff, but Koschei steps past her in order to open another door on the other side of the room. As soon as the door opens, a horrible wall of sound greets them.

Mangled animal cries grate against Theta’s ears and chafe against the raw edges of her nerves. Something howls, but rather than sounding canine, the noise cuts perilously close to the wail of a dying child. Theta would know. Given her lifelong proximity both factory work and the Hunger Games, it is a sound that she’s heard often. It chills her blood and roots her feet to the unforgiving floor. These must be the ghosts that haunt the near-vacant neighborhood above them.

She understands why people fled their homes.

“We’ll only be a minute. I have to grab something. You can stay here, if that’s more comfortable,” Koschei offers, but Theta shakes her head and takes first one difficult step forward and then another.

After a few long seconds, she manages to move from the conference room and into a laboratory. Examination tables and equipment dominate the center of the space, but along the walls sit rows upon rows of cages. Some are glass and some are wire, but each cage houses a different muttation. In one corner, a dog is curled with his tail over his nose, but when he opens his eyes to watch her, she sees a human gaze staring back. Birds jostle over each other in another — making a dozen noises that seem more at home in the Arena than in a laboratory. Perhaps worst of all, a shadowy wraith huddles in the largest cage, the twin of the one that shredded Rennette’s arm and was cut down by her knife.

This carnival of horrors must be Ushas’s experiments.

Theta feels as though she’s going to faint, and she anchors herself to the warmth of the key around her neck. She sets her gaze upon Koschei to the exclusion of all else, focusing only on the calm, measured fluidity of his movements as he crosses the room and opens the drawer, shuffling through its contents.

After a long moment of nothing but cacophonous noise, Theta clears her throat and observes, “You’ve been here before, then.”

The cage of birds repackages her words and spits them back at her in the wrong order.

“Then…Before…You’ve…Been...Here.”

Koschei does not so much as look up at either Theta or the birds. “I have.”

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

Koschei closes the drawer and opens another. “They’re not going to escape, if that’s what you’re worried about. Ushas keeps the cages locked, and she’s extremely thorough in her efforts.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Theta says, and though there’s some element of truth to the words, a hint of a lie stains the back of her tongue. She swallows once and casts her eyes away from Koschei, fixing on the floor as she restlessly drags the toe of her shoe across it.

For better or for worse, Koschei drops the issue and soldiers on, veering the topic away from Theta and towards the space in which they’ve found themselves. It is a relatively small kindness, but it is a kindness all the same, and Theta is grateful for it. Even if pressed, she doesn’t think she could find words strong enough to explain the peculiar assault of the noise or the unforgiving chill that it casts through her, nor is she interested in hearing his opinions about her fear.

“Ushas maintains a network of rooms here. She had it built in secret using some of the technology that runs the Arena itself. A few rooms deeper, there’s a safe house with a bed and a bathroom and enough food to last through a prolonged siege. I stayed there when we fought.”

“The President told me that you disappeared off of the map that day,” Theta replies, tearing her eyes away from the ground to fix on Koschei’s back as he continues to rifle through Ushas’ belongings.

“As I said, she had it built _in secret_.” After a moment’s pause, Koschei’s frowns and turns around, a single hand coming up to palm his beard. “Love, do you see a vial anywhere? Should have my name on it. She said she labelled it.”

A sigh trickles through Theta’s nose, and she begins to circle the room, keeping her hands obediently clasped behind her back. She avoids looking at the cages and their occupants. “How many people know this place exists?”

“Not many.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Koschei’s shrug infringes upon the tone of his voice as he says, “I don’t know for certain. Only Ushas has the authority to invite people.”

“You invited me,” Theta observes with a lifted eyebrow.

“Yes, well, we are rather tangled up in each other, aren’t we? One might go so far as to declare us a single entity. Indeed, the media has already veered in that direction.” He speaks the words as though it is both a natural progression and a process that he has spent weeks contemplating, but for Theta, the thought is at once alarming and sobering. She has not spent much time reflecting upon herself and Koschei as a unit, rather, she has been evaluating their relationship from the stance of two separate individuals. She has forgotten how tightly marriage will bind them together, how inextricable they will be once the ceremony ends. They will share a name, a promise, a link between them that is far more formal than an engagement made under false pretenses.

It is not an entirely unwelcome future, but there are moments when she feels like she’s been swept away by the tide, thrown about like a piece of driftwood, unable to find purchase in either the sandy riverbed or the passing shore. She wishes that this marriage could have happened on their own time, in their own way, but it is too closely tied to both public performance and potential assassinations for slowing down to be an actual possibility.

She is saved from a reply when her eyes alight upon a small box with Koschei’s name inscribed upon it in glistening ink. Her gaze lingers on the elaborate _Oakdown_ , and she silently inserts her first and middle names in front of it in a way a young teenager might when evaluating a potential future with their current crush. 

_Theta Sigma Oakdown_.

It might be nice to shed her family name, a name that has been linked to nothing but pain and misery since the very moment that her parents left this world and Theta found herself suddenly, irreparably alone.

Her fantasy is quickly ruined by the ragged, childlike howl of the dog behind her.

Koschei crosses the room and takes the box in his hands, popping open the lid with his thumb before peering inside at the contents.

“What is it?” Theta asks. The box is far too small to house the list of materials that she requested from Ushas in order to build a device capable of emitting an electromagnetic pulse, but she cannot recall Koschei mentioning the need another boon.

Koschei looks over at her, seemingly surprised by the question. He toys with his answer for a moment — tongue visibly pressing against the inside of his cheek as he weighs the risks and benefits of sharing the information with her — and when it finally comes, it has the air of reluctant, inconvenient truths. “It’s the new plan.”

“Which is?” Theta presses a little harder, searching for a real answer. She doesn’t think that she will be in any danger if Koschei doesn’t let her in on the specifics — after all, they already ruled out the possibility of injuring her in order to create a distraction — however, she wants to feel trusted and valuable. She wants him to treat her like a partner rather than a glass vase that might break at any moment.

“Poison distilled from Ushas’s snakes. Terribly effective stuff.”

A shudder runs through Theta’s body.

Though she has never encountered a snake muttation herself — thanks both to the district in which she grew up and the fact that her own Games had not stretched on long enough for the Gamemakers to spice up the proceedings by releasing mutts into the Arena — she has heard stories about what the enhanced venom does toits victims. A bite means certain death in less than a minute. The skin turns multicolored, the eyes and heart convulse, and in extreme circumstances of overexposure, the body can even develop a thin coating of scales.

More than one tribute over the years has fallen prey to a snake. By all reports, it’s a terrible way to go, and President Rassilon deserves nothing less.

A muscle in Theta’s jaw tightens. “Do you plan to slip it into his glass for the toast?”

Koschei nods.

“What if someone sees you?”

“They won’t,” he says with such strong conviction that it _must_ be true. “I’ll be quick, and thanks to you, we’ll knock out the cameras before I do it. The act won’t be recorded. They’ll have no evidence against us.” With every short sentence, his words grow faster and more frantic until they verge on fanatical.Anyone else might have called it the ravings of a mad man. Theta, however, sees the truth that lurks within it. He is desperate for her approval and worried that she won’t give it.

“It’s better than your last idea,” she admits rather begrudgingly as she begins edging towards the door through which they came, desperate to leave this laboratory and its cast of abominations behind.

A smile flits across Koschei’s lips — there and gone so quickly that it might have very well been a figment of her imagination. “Good.”

With that, he steps past her and opens the door.

The pair is quiet as they pass through first the abandoned meeting space and the flooded tunnels beyond, but Theta’s hand sneaks out in front of her and she laces her fingers through his. Koschei glances back over his shoulder at her for a second, an unreadable expression etched upon his face, but he does not speak.

When they finally break back onto the surface, Theta squints and raises her free hand to her forehead to blot out the sun. Around them, thunder roars, and she glances up at the sky, confused as to how it might be blindingly sunny and storming at the same time.

There is a sharp crack and an ominous rumble, and Koschei’s hand breaks from hers as he starts to run.

Suddenly, Theta understands.

The storm isn’t here. It’s in the Arena, being broadcast across the many projections that plaster the Capitol, and whenever it rains in the Hunger Games, somebody dies.

With scarcely a moment to catch her breath, Theta tears down the street after Koschei.

The errand is over.

Rennette needs their help.


	48. Chapter 48

By the time they make it back to the betting rooms, Theta is thoroughly out of breath. Being the better runner of the two, she overtook Koschei a number of blocks ago, and she spends several long minutes panting in the doorway before he finally manages to catch up to her. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him pat his breast pocket, subtly checking to make sure that the vial of poison is still safely ensconced inside. It is bold of him, she thinks, to carry the manner of the President’s assassination into these elite spaces with them, to know that no one else will ever be aware that a painful death lurks within the carefully draped folds of his clothes. She likes that boldness, likes the inherent confidence in it, but she does not have time to dwell on it before thunder rumbles throughout the room and reminds her of the storm that dragged them here.

Koschei’s hand finds her shoulder as he draws up beside her, seeking some sort of steadiness in the wake of their shared worry and physical exertion. Someone in charge of the atmosphere in the betting rooms has dimmed the overhead lights, casting the typically colorful crowd in the grim, preternatural blue of the storm unfolding in the Arena. It is only when lightning flashes — unforgivingly bright and decidedly fleeting — that one can see the familiar pageantry thrown into sharp relief, albeit undercut and overwrought with stark shadows.

Though Theta’s terror tends to drag her eyes down and away from the space’s many screens — stubbornly unwilling to contend with the annual parade of horrors and her mandatory place within them — today, she finds herself transfixed upon them. With the climax of the Games nearly in sight and with so much riding upon a District 3 victory, her fear for Rennette has overridden her fear of her own pain.

For the first time in her life, she cannot bear to look away.

Rain is falling in sheets, the drops so densely packed together that they manage to seep through every breach and crack in the ancient ceilings, filling the ruins with water. The camera follows a single, drenched, tired tribute as he fights to wade through the rapidly flooding tunnels, blinking rain out of his eyes and dragging his hand over the wall as he goes, desperately searching for a way out.

Weather and other calamities have long been a useful tool for driving tributes into the same space when the pace of the Games grows slow and the Gamemakers are pressed to create a bit of action to placate the audience and maintain a sense of momentum. A touch of fire or the sudden shake of an earthquake can trap an opposing group of tributes into the same room, drive them back to the Cornucopia, or force the more vigilant tributes to drop their guard. Though she doubts that the lightning or floodwaters will kill a tribute directly, Theta does not doubt that this storm will not end until blood is shed.

In her head, Theta tabulates the current number of casualties and then breathes a heavy sigh through her nose. There are enough tributes still alive that the flat odds are not strictly _against_ Rennette, but Theta cannot discount the fact that Rennette is still the youngest, still the smallest, still the least likely to be able to hold her ground in hand to hand combat. Sure, she picked up a knife, killed one tribute, and managed to off one of Ushas’ more nightmarish mutts, but those victories only count for so much in a game where there can only be one survivor. The other tributes stuck in the Arena with her have also won their share of skirmishes. Likely, a few have a few more badges of victory to their name than does the eleven-year old.

Theta dares to glance back over her shoulder, teeth sinking into her chapped bottom lip as she glances over the current odds. Rennette has managed to creep her way up the leaderboard, moving above three of the remaining tributes from other districts, but she is still far from being the crowd favorite.

The payoffs for long-shots are high, and everyone loves an underdog story, but everyone with money to spare has seen the story of the Games unfold dozens of times.

They all know that a bet on District 3 — nonetheless a bet on a child as young as Rennette — is not the smartest move, even as her odds increase. 

Theta’s eyes roam back towards the screen as the broadcast cuts to a camera inset into the landing below a winding staircase, and her breath catches in her throat.

Koschei’s grip on her shoulder tightens.

Rennette stands at the foot of those stairs, breathing just as heavily as Theta and Koschei had been a minute prior. Her fingers are firmly wrapped around the hilt of her stolen knife. The blood that had been caked onto the metal dissolves in the torrential downpour, streaking down her fingers in a series of rivulets that mirrors the still-healing slashes on her arm. Her eyes are wide and frantic, searching for whatever looming threat lurks in the unforgiving, near-blind press of the rain. There is no doubt in Theta’s mind that the girl can been chased here while off-screen, pressed into a corner by an assailant who is as yet unseen.

For Rennette, there is no way out but up.

Caesar’s commentary cuts through the rolling sounds of the downpour, riding a wave of thunder as he says something blithe and meaningless. The noise barely registers in Theta’s mind — passing in one ear and out the other as she channels all of her focus into desperately hoping that Rennette will survive this storm.

Something shifts in the blue darkness — little more than grainy and pixelated shadow on the broadcast — and Rennette flees. She takes the spiraling steps two at a time, running up the only path available to her. Six steps up, the rock crumbles. She catches herself with a wince, and the knife goes flying from her hand. She doesn’t have time to languish in her misery, doesn’t have time to check for broken bones, doesn’t have time to waste. She can only grit her teeth, pull herself back to her feet, snatch up the fallen knife, and keep running.

Lightning cracks, and for the first time, the girl’s pursuer is thrown into sharp relief. It’s the male tribute from District 1 — large, hulking, trained from birth to be the most effective killer possible. It is not an opponent that Theta would have chosen for Rennette, if given the chance. Quite the opposite. She can tell that Koschei has the same thought, can read it in the flicker of his eyes as he glances sideways at her and then focuses his attention back upon the screens.

If he notices the fact that Theta is daring to watch, he does not comment upon it, however, he sidles a half-step closer, shielding her with his warmth.

The pair’s ragged breathing and the relentless sound of driving rain fills the air, interrupted only by an occasional crack of thunder and flash of lightning. Caesar’s chatter has given way to quiet anticipation as all of Panem awaits whatever drama will unfold at the top of the ruined tower.

To Theta, the climb seems to take hours, though she does not doubt that it is over in a matter of seconds. The room at the top of the tower, likely intended to be an observatory if these ruins were ever a real, functioning place and not simply a creation of the Gamemakers, is in shambles. Half of its dome has fallen away entirely, taking an entire wall with it and leaving only a few rocks in its place to block the long fall to the ground.

Rennette quickly glances around the space — breathlessly trying to figure out the most strategic position within it.

“Put your back to the wall,” Theta mumbles under her breath, a pointless set of words that no one but the man beside her can hear. Such is one of the many horrors of being a mentor. You can only coach your tributes in the moments of least need — in training rooms and lush apartments and in the brief moments when the Arena is quiet enough to ensure the receipt of a sponsored gift. In the moments that really matter, mentors are voiceless, and the tributes are left to fend for themselves, entirely alone in a death trap that’s rigged against them.

Theta’s pulse beats against the confines of her throat — pressing against the key that sits around her neck — as Rennette’s hesitation stretches to its limits. It is only when the head of the District 1 boy breaks into view that she picks the ground on which she will take her stand.

To Theta’s enormous relief, that ground is against the wall, rather than against driving rain and empty air.

Always clever, that girl.

Wet, shaggy hair clings to the boy’s forehead as he steps towards Rennette, drawing a nasty looking dagger from his belt and grimacing as he prepares for what he expects to be an easy and honorless kill. Rennette’s eyes dash around the room, looking either for tools that she might use to her advantage or an easy path back towards the staircase that had carried them here, but she does not keep her eyes off of her opponent for long, does not dare give the older boy an opening that he would be more than willing to exploit.

Rennette takes a single step forward, leaving a bit of space at her back, and tightens both her grip on her knife and the set of her jaw.

If she is going to die, she is going to die fighting.

A glimmer of pride flickers in Theta’s chest, matching the glimmer of metal at Rennette’s breastbone as Koschei’s trinket reflects a sudden bolt of lightning.

The lightning does not strike the tower, but it comes painfully close. The boy flinches. The small hairs on Theta’s arms raise, faced with the unshakeable memory of electricity-charged air. Rennette takes advantage of the other tribute’s momentary weakness and steps forward, dropping into a roll as she swipes at his ankles.

He steps aside at the last possible moment, but he loses his balance in the fray, allowing Rennette to spring to her feet and strike for a second time before he has a chance to mount his own offense.

Their blades meet in the rain-soaked air, sparking slightly in the dim light.

When they stand face-to-face, the difference in size is immediately apparent. Rennette is less than half the size of the older boy, ridiculously outmatched in everything but speed, which she once again leverages to her advantage as she side-steps his next blow.

No longer caught on the back foot, the District 1 tribute strides forward, confidently striking out again and again as Rennette continues to dodge his attacks. As they draw nearer and nearer to the collapsed wall and the void that lies beyond, the rain grows more and more intense, trailing down the tributes’ faces and blurring their vision. To the viewer, it is abundantly clear that neither tribute can see the other properly. Combat becomes less exact, and everything begins to move in slow motion.

The toe of Rennette’s boot slips against a rain-drenched rock, and she comes crashing down to the floor. This time,as opposed to her fall on the stairs, she manages to keep a firm grip on her knife. She rolls away from the boy’s next blow, coming perilously close to the crumbling edge of the tower.

Her eyes dart between her opponent and the world beyond as she gathers herself for a second, weighing the move that is most likely to save her.

Theta can feel every muscle in Koschei’s body tense against her side, and she does not doubt that her own body is carrying the same amount of stress. For the first time in a long time, Theta is watching a fight in the Games unfold live, without first knowing the outcome. It suddenly strikes her that Rennette could die this very second, that she could see it happen in real time, and yet, she still cannot seem to tear her eyes away from the broadcast.

Despite the endless torrent of doubts that her insufferable sense of logic keeps forcing upon her, she believes in Rennette’s ability to somehow win this fight.

She _has_ to believe in Rennette’s ability to win this fight.

The entire future rests upon it.

The boy raises his dagger, Rennette jumps to her feet, and Theta forgets to breathe.

There’s a tussle — blade to blade and body to body — as the District 1 tribute shoves Rennette closer and closer to the ledge.

Mere inches mark the distance between Rennette’s constantly moving feet and empty air.

Lightning once again flashes, accompanied by an ominous roll of thunder, and seeing the boy’s face illuminated by the fleeting, blinding light reminds Theta that this boy, too, is just a child — forcibly conscripted into a fate that he never deserved, pressured to volunteer for the glory of his home district.

The thought makes victory taste sour on Theta’s tongue as Rennette steps out of the way, and the boy’s own momentum sends him plunging over the ledge and towards certain death.

A cannon rings out — occupying the open space that lurks between the discontented rumblings of thunder.

For a long time, Rennette stands almost entirely still — shoulders heaving as panting breaths attempt to chase away the lingering vestiges of her adrenaline. If there are wet sobs between the breaths, they are entirely obscured by the rain.

In the betting rooms in which Theta and Koschei stand, cheers and groans ring out in turn — the result of some bets won and other bets lost. 

Someone claps Theta on the back, but she does not raise her chin or turn her head to see who that hand might belong to.

A long moment passes, and Koschei pivots, finally peeling his fingers from Theta’s shoulder and taking both her hands in his. Someone raises the lights, and The can see the grim aftereffects of the strain upon each other’s faces — occupying thin, fraying lines that exist only upon the faces of those who have entered the Arena and emerged intact.

Everyone else in the Capitol has their pain lasered away.

“Did you watch it?” Koschei asks, voice weary and quiet.

Theta nods, unable to summon the proper words to reply.

Koschei’s thoughts, too, seem to exist beyond the bounds speech. He merely regards her, face set beneath the dimming semblance of the mask that he usually wears. Theta does not know if his control over his persona is getting worse or if she has merely gotten better at reading the person that lies beneath it.

Both possibilities seem equally likely.

He tears his gaze away from hers in order to grab two flutes of champagne from a passing tray. He hands one to Theta before raising his own aloft in a small toast.

“To being one step closer.”

Theta cannot find it in herself to return the gesture, and she drowns the glass in one go before taking a single step forward and burying her face in Koschei’s shoulder to hide her doubt and her fear and her tears.


	49. Chapter 49

Theta sinks beneath the surface of the water with a quiet, bubbling sigh. She is not normally one for baths, but after witnessing the events of the rainstorm in the Arena today, she cannot quite bring herself to step into the shower. Though it is not her preference, she does have to admit, the Capitol knows how to draw a good bath. The warmth of the water is soothing, and the scent of the lavender oils that run from one of the taps threatens to lull her to sleep here, amongst the quiet buzz of the jets and the whir of the overhead fans.

A knock on the door disturbs her moment of peace, and Theta assumes it must be Amy come to measure her for wedding dresses — a visit that was threatened by a short note received earlier in the day — and invites the knocker to come inside. Instead, as the door opens, her bright green gaze alights upon Koschei’s familiar figure. Instinctively, she sinks deeper beneath the surface of the water, making absolutely sure that nothing but her head is left uncovered by the blanket of bubbles and the rainbow sheen of the oil.

Koschei’s eyes linger on the surface of the water a second too long to be interpreted as strictly modest, however, he turns his stare away a moment later, covering the moment of weakness with a small, obviously forced cough. “Do you mind if I join you?” he asks as his hand falls away from his mouth, still intently focused on nothing in particular.

Theta looks first at him and then at the tub. In the gregarious Capitol way, it is less a traditional bathtub and more of a small pool — capable of hosting an entire party were the occupants of the apartment so inclined. There is ample space for both of them to exist without unwanted contact, and, as she sweeps a hand just below the surface of the water, it becomes abundantly clear that he is unlikely to see her nude unless she specifically chooses to exposes herself. Somewhat comforted by that fact, she nods. “If you like.”

Koschei’s shoulders raise and his chest swells as he inhales deeply. Theta has grown accustomed to the many ways in which his nervousness has come to define these shared private moments. There is inherent contradiction in the way that he can both desire and fear her in equal measure, and often that duality inhabits the space between them through small hesitations and glancing skin-to-skin contact and the slow abandonment of reservations as time slips by and their walls sink ever lower. Theta appreciates it, in her own way. In addition to making Koschei feel both more real and more human, it offers her enough space to make decisions, to progress the private aspects of their relationship at whatever speed she finds most comfortable instead of feeling pushed forward by games and plans and schemes.

“Do you mind turning around?” Koschei asks in the echo of an oft-repeated question.

Theta’s lips quirk in a small smirk, but she turns around to face the opposite wall, craning her neck upwards as she dips her short hair into the water and takes a moment to do nothing more than float.

Ripples rock her body when Koschei finally steps into the bath, and a primal shiver raises the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. The pair is often in contact — often wrapped in each other’s arms and sharing whispers and writing kisses across each other’s lips — but it is one thing to touch someone and another to be entirely exposed to them with naught but scant distance and a layer of bubbles standing guard.

“I’m guessing you wanted to talk?” Theta says, raising her eyebrows as she continues to float just below the surface of the water, staring up at the ceiling and not at Koschei. “Or else you were just too impatient to wait for me to get out before you took your own bath.”

A wave of lavender-scented water washes over her, filling her nose and burning her eyes and causing her to sputter in surprise. “ _Oi_!” she protests indignantly once she catches her breath. Her feet find purchase on the smooth tile at the bottom of the pool and she turns to face him. His laugh hangs in the air, but she cuts it short with a splash of her own. “That wasn’t fair,” she pouts, though her exaggerated misery does not quite manage to dampen the pleased, mischievous sparkle in her eyes.

“Wasn’t it?” Koschei asks, drawing a stroke closer. Theta can see drops of water clinging to his lashes and shimmering on the surface of his skin. Between the two of them, she is often the one draped in stars and rain and electricity, but she has to admit, glittering stars look rather comely on Koschei, too, even if they are comprised only of droplets water and not entirely woven from light.

There is a flutter in her heart as a blush creeps across her cheek, and she covers it with another wall of water thrown in Koschei’s direction. It plasters his hair to his forehead and leaves him gasping for air, but the gleam in his star-flecked eyes suggests that it did little to distract from the truth.

They know each other too well for magic tricks to work.

“Well, it certainly isn’t fair _now_ ,” Koschei says. His voice is honey sweet as it drips from his lips — almost liquid as it traverses the space between them. “I’m not allowed to splash you once, but you’re allowed to splash me twice.”

Theta sniffs. “I asked you a question, and you didn’t answer it.”

Somewhere unseen beneath the water, Koschei’s foot grazes against hers. Theta does not pull away from the contact.

The time that passes between silence and Koschei’s next words seems to be both negligible and infinite.

“Can I have your hands, love?”

Theta’s nose wrinkles. After the exchanged splashes, she is naturally suspicious of his motives. She does not want to give him an opportunity to pull her beneath the surface of the water. She may lose at sparring, but she will not lose this water fight, however playful it may be. “Why?”

Koschei gazes fixes upon hers, and Theta cannot tell if it is simply the water still clinging to his skin or if there are real tears lurking at the corners of his eyes. “Don’t you trust me?”

A tiny laugh breezes between Theta’s lips. “After all of that? No.” She shies away from the seriousness in his eyes and his tone with a joke, but beneath the surface of the water, she extends her arms and seeks out his open hands. A jolt of pain echoes through her broken wrist, but the blow is softened both by the water and the painkillers that run through her veins. It seems at once that there is one world above the water — full of nerves and humor and bated breath — and another world below it, where they can quietly hold hands and brush bodies in peace.

This time, Koschei does not meet the joke with one of his own. “You’re right,” he admits after a moment’s pause. “I do want to talk to you.”

Theta’s eyebrows contract, meeting in a concerned furrow above her nose as her eyes flick between Koschei’s features, unable to settle n a single spot. Her tongue sneaks out to wet her lips. She is terribly anxious, as she almost always is in the face of uncertainty. As thoroughly as she has learned Koschei’s habits — as well-acquainted as they have become in the past weeks — there are still plenty of moments when he manages to surprise her. Quickly, her mind cycles through a list of possible subjects — the Games, the assassination, the wedding — and she is unable to pinpoint which of them necessitates grasped hands and interrupted baths.

“So talk.”

The words spin off her tongue harsher than she intends, sharpened by worry and the unshakeable tension that always seems to race between them.

Koschei averts his eyes, gathering his courage and recollecting a series of words that seem to have slipped his mind. “We’ve spoken at length about killing the President, but I noticed that we haven’t addressed the wedding.”

Beneath the water, Theta’s fingers tense.

“What of it?” The question attempts to feign nonchalance, but it falls dreadfully short. There is nothing casual about intimate discussions in a shared bath, and she does not doubt Koschei knew that when he knocked on the door and asked to join her. It occurs to Theta that she could ask to leave the conversation — let go of his hands and exit the water and resign it to the pile of all the things between them that remain unspoken — but both curiosity and the law of attraction hold her tightly within the bounds of the bath.

For better or for worse, she would like to hear what Koschei has to say.

Koschei’s thumbs run across the skin of Theta’s hands — a restless gesture, but a comforting one. “I am well-aware that our wedding, as it currently stands, is a farce. It is something that you did not want or ask for.” He inhales again — shallow, shaking, surprisingly strangled — and Theta finds herself moving closer to him. She presses her leg to his. For a moment, it looks as though the ability to speak has abandoned Koschei altogether, but eventually, the words manage to leave him in a garbled rush. “I — I would also be lying if I hadn’t noticed changes with you. With us. Not that we haven’t had our moments of difficulty, but I was wondering, do you want it to be real?”

Theta tilts her head. The wet ends of her hair trail across her bare shoulders, shedding trails of water that trace the complicated lines of her scars. Her eyes narrow slightly, as she waits to see whether or not another question might follow this one. “Is there a catch?” she asks. “Does it make something easier if I do? You can speak candidly with me, you know. I’m not going to run to Rassilon and spill your secrets. At lease not anytime soon, anyway.”

She’s babbling. She knows she’s babbling, but she wants time and information. She wants to know that they are on the same page before she dares to answer him honestly.

There are few things more embarrassing than answering the wrong question and opening yourself up to heartbreak, and for all the faith she’s placed in him, the way her body automatically responds to his touch, the natural partnership they form, there are some uncertainties that still occupy the space between them.

“No catch. I want to know if you want to marry me, Theta.”

Theta is fairly sure that her heart has stopped beating. Were it not for the support of Koschei’s body against hers and the water that surrounds them, she might have stumbled and fallen. Whatever she had expected, it was not this. “You’ve already asked me that,” she observes. “Twice.”

Koschei clears his throat, and his voice gets a little bit stronger and regains some of its usual certainty.“I asked once for the President and once for the benefit Capitol. I have not asked for me. So right now I’m asking you and only you. Theta, do you want to marry me?”

Theta blinks. She finds herself thinking back to that day on the stage when he described a proposal that never happened — a proposal on a rooftop beneath a sky full of stars. Back then, she assumed that it was the proposal that he wished he had the chance to offer to someone. She assumed that he was tapping into some inner fantasy because that was what he asked from her in building this narrative. But perhaps, like all things held between Koschei and the Capitol, that was a lie. Perhaps he never dreamed of that. Perhaps he always dreamed of dim lights and the smell of lavender and naked bodies pressed together beneath the water.

It is not Theta’s dream, but her dream died alongside Rose Tyler. She no longer structures her life around dreams, rather, she lives for the harsh mornings that come after, and it has been far better to wake up in Koschei’s arms than to face morning after morning with no company but her own. He keeps her nightmares at bay, and she has gone to battle against his more than once.

Committing herself to another person is terrifying. Any answer renders her vulnerable, any connection could be exploited, but something within her yearns for the comfort of partnership, the promise of finding and creating a home she has not had in years, alongside someone who holds her heart.

Both together and apart, they are far from perfect, but despite all their stumbles, despite all their anger, despite all the deaths that plague them, Theta keeps find herself falling back into him.

Koschei is the only person that understands her, the only person in the entirety of Panem who promised to catch her, and Theta falls into him again now, pressing her palm flat against the scar on his chest and speaking a quiet “Yes” against his mouth.

Noses brush together as their lips meet, and then, with a laugh and a smile, she sweeps his legs out from under him and plunges them both beneath the water.

A huge, lavender-scented splash marks their descent, and by the time they finally surface again, they have both entirely forgotten how to breathe.


	50. Chapter 50

The following day is awash with newfound optimism.

Today, no one in the betting rooms is paying attention to the Hunger Games. It is not unusual for their to be a lull in the action once two-thirds of the field has been eliminated — indeed, at this point, it is a practically expected part of the timeline — and the Capitol Elite take full advantage of the break in the action to rest and socialize.

Theta sits on one of the many sofas that line the room, and Koschei is draped across her lap. He’s in her clothes and she’s in his — an idea born from their shared relief and the collapse of one of the last remaining barriers between them — and though Theta half-expected to be chided for their impertinence in a sacred space, a seemingly endless string of people keep commenting upon how perfect their engagement is and how much they would like to be in attendance at the wedding. Koschei receives most of these visitors, walking the line between warm and dutiful. Theta barely speaks except to interject an occasional joke or a witty observation. Instead, she is almost entirely focused on a cork in her hand, running through a series of sleight of hand exercises that Koschei taught her over breakfast.

The cork is approximately the same size as the bottle of venom that Koschei retrieved from Ushas’ lab. Though she is not expected to be the person who claims the President’s life, it seems rather prudent to prepare for every possible eventuality. They cannot afford for the plan to go awry. They cannot afford for Rassilon to survive. They cannot afford to be caught and find themselves unceremoniously tossed into prison…or worse.

A frustrated huff puffs Theta’s cheeks as she yet again fails to wrap her fingers around the cork quite the right way. Though she knows how to do the trick — has watched Koschei carefully as he walked through the steps over and over again, taking detailed mental notes — actually _doing_ it is another matter entirely. It requires a subtlety of movement of which she is almost entirely incapable. Of course, she is just as much a showman as Koschei is, in her own way, but she is also loud and inelegant and brazen, all of which lie as far from compatibility with a magician’s touch as is conceivably possible.

She is acutely aware of both the weight of Koschei’s body on hers and the many, many times that his gaze flicks to her — evaluating, appreciating, observing — before floating back to the rest of the room. His restraint is tangible. Theta does not doubt there are a hundred corrections lurking on the tip of his tongue, but she has been less than receptive to his criticism and intervention in the past, so she does not blame him for holding help at bay until she explicitly asks for it.

Her tongue pokes out between her teeth as she concentrates, running through the series of motions one last time.

Once again, she is unsuccessful.

“I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong,” she complains, dropping the offending cork onto Koschei’s chest.

It bounces once before he scoops it up in his own hands. In the space of a single heartbeat, it vanishes. With a smirk and a mischievous sparkle in his eyes, he reaches up and pretends to retrieve it from behind Theta’s ear.

She wants to be mad at him — she _so badly_ wants to be mad at him — but there is an earnestness in his expression that takes her anger and transforms it into fondness.

“Yes, I know _you_ can do it, but _I_ can’t. That’s the heart of the problem, isn’t it?” The statement falls rather short of the exasperation that she had been shooting for, but there is a certain amount of grumpiness present within it all the same.

Koschei settles back against her lap, staring up at her, smirk lingering. “Would you like me to walk you through it again? Or should I throw it across the room?” There’s a momentary pause as he lifts his chin, regarding the crowd. “Drax is looking the other way. He’ll never know what hit him.”

Theta’s eyes follow his. The idea of stirring up a bit of light-hearted trouble with Koschei is terribly tempting. It harkens back to the first Capitol party of the year, the first moment when they truly worked together and she felt the gentle stirrings of camaraderie. However, now is not the time for levity. If they are successful, such days will come again — better and more numerous than before — but first, they must focus every possible ounce of their attention on both shepherding Rennette towards victory and staging a successful assassination, and with the current tension between them — the touching, the lingering, the sweeping gazes — their available attention is already painfully limited.

A sigh drifts past Theta’s parted lips. “I suppose you might as well start making yourself useful instead of just lying there and chewing the scenery.” It is, perhaps, not most apt description of what Koschei is currently doing, but she is both too proud and too stubborn to admit that he might be up to anything else.

There is a pointed and purposeful brush of the tips of Koschei’s fingers against the ticklish skin at the center of Theta’s palm as he takes her hands in his, and a shiver passes through her. She sinks her teeth into her lower lip, biting back another bristling, overly defensive comment. _Focus_ , she silently reminds herself. _Everything else comes later_.

Koschei does not allow her the dignity of pretending that her little slip went unnoticed.

“Cold?” he teases as he pushes the cork back into her hand, manipulating her fingers around it in the first step of the trick.

On instinct, Theta deflects. “Is that the most productive position for you to be in?”

“I quite literally know these things upside-down and backwards. Unless there is some other problem you have with this little arrangement?”

“I wouldn’t call it a problem, _exactly_ ,” Theta mutters under her breath, scarcely loud enough for Koschei to hear.

But hear her he does, and he arches a single eyebrow. “Is that so?” The words are surprisingly soft, a gentle caress of sound as he double-checks her form.

Theta feels as though she should say something — anything — but her throat grows dry and her tongue grows leaden.

Koschei, however, doesn’t seem to mind.

“ _One_ ,” he counts when he’s managed to get her hand in the proper starting point. He gives her a moment to look over it, memorize what it feels like, before she guides her into the next step. “ _Two_.”

The next sequence is tricker. “This is where you’re losing it. It’s a fluid motion between two and three. If you pause or bobble it, then the game is up.” He has her run through the transition multiple times, with his hands lightly guiding hers. Theta tries to focus as closely as she can, but her heart is sitting uncomfortably in her throat, and every passing touch is deeper and more meaningful than it ought to be.

“Two, three, two, three, there it is. And then you bring it into four, _here_ , and tuck it away again.”

Koschei’s hands fall away, fingers lacing on top of his abdomen as he gazes up at her.

Theta keeps her eyes firmly fixed upon the cork as she runs through the entire trick. _One, two, three, four, five_. It isn’t perfect, but it’s much closer than she was a few minutes ago. He offers her a snippet of feedback, and she runs through it over and over again until she can perform it flawlessly multiple times it a row.

She breaks into a pleased grin. She doesn’t know if she would be able to follow through with poisoning a man’s drink — if she could commit to having more blood staining her hands and her conscience — but there is a sense of accomplishment that comes alongside being able to learn a new skill, especially after spending so much of her life stubbornly wallowing in the mud of inaction.

There’s a forceful exhale and a groan of effort as Koschei finally sits up. There is a distinct feeling of absence as his weight vacates her lap, but it does not last for long.

Koschei is back in Theta’s lap a second later, his legs straddling hers as his breath trails over the lines and angles of her face.

“Oh, hi. Hey. Hello.” The words leave her in a rush, buoyed by her racing heart and the immediacy of their shared proximity. Something about it feels different than it did before the engagement was real, before she had to open her heart to him and admit that he meant more to her than a mere collaborator in a coup. She is committed to him, he is committed to her, and the depth of their feelings is no longer an unspoken truth to be danced around and artfully avoided.

It’s direct.

It’s acknowledged.

It has a name, and in having a name, they have leant it a newfound strength, an undeniable poignancy, a fire that refuses to burn itself out.

“Hello, love.”

She can feel his smirk against her lips as he leans in for a kiss — surrenders beneath it, allows it to consume and devour her. It is a public kiss, taken in full view of a room of familiar strangers, but it feels intimate, as if the air around them has bent and molded into a bubble that shields them from the rest of the room. She is vaguely aware of his intervening fingers as he pries the cork from her grasp, and she lets it go.

It doesn’t need her focus anymore.

It doesn’t need her attention.

She can take a moment to rest before she moves onto the next thing, the next step, the next part of an endlessly complicated plan. There are dozens of contingencies, a hundred things that can go wrong, a seemingly endless array of moving parts, and a broad cast of both vigilantes and enemies.

Taking down a state and its leader is no small matter.

It is a declaration of love of the highest order — love for the outlying districts, love for their people, love for each other.

When their faces part, Koschei’s smirk has morphed into a genuine smile, delighting in her presence, drinking in the electricity. He raises a hand, blue lightning shimmering on his sleeve as he places the cork in her line of sight. “Now watch this.”

His eyes fix on his target across the room, and after miming a throw once, twice, three times — he follows through. It sails across the crowded space completely unencumbered, as if it had been loosed from a freshly shaken bottle of champagne, and nails the low-level official in the back of the head.

Confused, Drax raises a palm to the spot of collision and looks around, seeking out the source of the interruption.

Though there is no real need to hide, Koschei pivots, pushing Theta back against the pillows and pinning her beneath him. They stare at each other for a breathless, confused, elated instant before breaking into shared laughter. It is wild, childish, indulgent — but it speaks to the sort of life that they were denied when they were young and innocent and full of untapped potential. It speaks to the world that once was, long before they were born, and the world that could be again, once the Games are abolished and Rassilon is out of power.

Of course, Theta and Koschei cannot reclaim their lost time, but they can secure a better, kinder life for other people, and waste away whatever time they have left with untamed mischief and enthusiastic kisses and uproarious howls of laughter.

However, that time has not arrived yet.

And their bubble bursts suddenly — beneath an explosion, an unexpected hush, and Caesar’s confused commentary.

“Can we play that back? I do believe we’ve had an unexpected ambush.”

Theta shoves Koschei off of her, sending him rolling onto the floor, and shoots upward, seeking out the largest of the many projections that line the room.

It takes a moment for the smoke around the camera to clear, but once it does, Rennette is standing in the middle of a ruined courtyard, with sand blowing about her ankles and something grasped tightly in her hand.

Scattered around her are bodies.

Between the sand and the smoke and the swirling of Theta’s vision, they’re impossible to count.

So many.

Too many.

Most of the remaining field, surely, if not all of it.

Beside and below her, Koschei breathes out a curse.

“We’re not ready,” Theta says, running through their checklist, the events of the Games, the pageantry that precedes a wedding and a Victor’s crowning and a public assassination.

Koschei’s response is appropriately grave. “I know.”

Caesar’s voice floats through the speakers again, tittering and flustered and lost, “Well then, people of Panem, it seems as if we’re down to our final pair of tributes.”

And Theta’s momentary fantasy comes crashing down, dashed into a millions pieces on the marble floors.

In the space of a single moment, this has all become a bit too real, a bit too immediate.

Time has slipped through their fingers — squandered on parties and sparring and arguments in elevators — and they've suddenly found themselves left behind. 


	51. Chapter 51

Theta paces back and forth against one wall of the bathroom, heart pounding and thoughts racing. Once the initial shock of the slaughter had passed, she and Koschei agreed to rendezvous somewhere private, somewhere where they would be able to speak without being overheard, and their minds once again turned to the bathroom that they had occupied only a few days ago. They travelled separately to avoid notice. Theta dove into the room almost immediately, slipping through the crowds like a fiery shadow, but Koschei took his time, shaking hands and offering friendly smiles to those who wished to congratulate them. 

Though Theta feels as though she ought to be relieved that the Games are almost over, she cannot shake the sinking dread that accompanies the fear of failure. She doesn’t feel ready to confront any of this — not the reunion with Rennette should the girl win, not the assassination, and  _ certainly _ not the wedding. With every step, she thinks of a new detail that has been heretofore unaddressed. Where will people be standing? What vows will we say? What happens after? Will I have to see the moment when Rassilon seizes and dies? 

Her cheeks flush, her palms glisten with a layer of cold sweat, and she shakes her hair out of her face as she stares down the door, reminding herself that Koschei has been planning this assassination for years. Surely, he has covered all of the possibilities. Surely it will be okay. Surely even this compressed timeline will give him enough time to prepare. 

She just needs to do her part. 

When the door finally opens, and Koschei steps into the room, a grim expression descending upon the set of his face, Theta is upon him in an instant, full to the brim with nervous energy. There are so many doubts, worries, and unanswered questions swirling about in her mind that she cannot pluck a single one out of her mind and lend it words, there is only a single, nebulous blob that can only be contained by a sharp inhale and a rushed and stumbling, “So what do we do now?” 

Koschei looks at her, brown eyes solemn, the lines on his face firmly set in immutable stone, expression entirely unreadable. “We follow through.” 

It’s a terribly simple idea. So simple, in fact, that it seems untenable. In the face of it, Theta can do little more than blink. 

“But the time —“

Koschei cuts her off before she has a chance to finish. “We always knew that it was a possibility, love. The Games move as the Games move. Sometimes they are long and arduous affairs, and other times, they’re over before anyone has had a chance to sleep.”

An itch races beneath her skin, nagging at each and every single one of pores, demanding to be felt. “Don’t pretend that you didn’t look just as shocked as I did a minute ago.” 

Koschei merely shrugs. “Shock fades.” 

“ _ Koschei _ ,” she leans into the word with such intensity that it almost becomes a growl. 

He refuses to meet her fear in kind. “Theta.”

“Be honest with me,” she demands with a decisive step forward, a tightly clenched fist by her side, and a frown firmly situated upon her face. 

A lengthy silence punctuates the words. 

One of Koschei’s hands finds his pocket, but the other hovers in the air in front of his shoulder as he idly runs his thumb over the pads of his fingers. His eyes refuse to focus on hers, regarding nothing in particular as he straddles the distance between comforting lies and uncomfortable truths. 

Eventually, he summons up an answer. “We don’t have time to be scared.” 

“Of course we do. Scared keeps us fast. It’s the first thing people talk about when Tributes go into the Arena, isn’t it? Embrace the fear, run away as fast as you can.” 

Koschei lifts his eyes to Theta’s. “We’re not exactly running away.” 

“Same principle applies, doesn’t it? Running to something and running away from something is different in name only; your feet are still moving either way.” The words are intended to be just as much a reassurance for her as they are to him. Even during a normal running of the Games, she would be  _ terrified _ . Those feelings have only increased a hundredfold since marriage and murder were introduced into the equation. 

Koschei merely hums, vaguely dissatisfied with both the questions and their potential answers. 

Frustrated and fervent, Theta presses onward. 

“Tell me what we need to do, what needs to change, where your head’s at. You don’t gain anything by shutting down. We’re engaged now — actually, properly  _ engaged _ — and I’m in this with you, whatever happens. Let me help you.” She stares into his eyes from inches away, her shallow breaths lightly rustling the hairs on his cheeks. “Don’t make us have this fight again.  _ Please _ .” 

The final word drops into a quiet, desperate plea, and Theta sees something shatter behind his gaze. 

Koschei’s teeth sink into his lower lip, leaving angry divots behind. “Yes, Theta,” he finally says, the words borne upon a weary sigh of admission. “I am  _ afraid _ .” 

Theta nods once, and swallows back her own fear as best as she can, compartmentalizing for the sake of productivity. “Good. Now that that’s out of the way and we know we’re both scared out of our wits, what are we going to do about it?” 

The question rings out like a challenge, and reflexively, Theta looks towards the door to make absolutely sure that it’s still locked, but no sooner has her gaze alit upon it than Koschei’s fingers press against the underside of her chin, guiding her face back towards his. It is her own lip’s turn to be caught within his teeth, and the touch sends a shiver throughout her body. 

She wants nothing more than to tangle with him — to once again feel skin against skin, the way they had in the bath the previous night — but there are things to be done, responsibilities to carry out. If they succeed, then they will have the rest of their lives to hungrily consume each other. 

So she takes a couple of steps back, gently but firmly putting space between them as she sinks onto the couch against the wall. 

“Then tell me,” she starts, fighting to keep the slight trembling of her body and the racing beat of her heart out of her voice, “What needs to change?” 

Koschei stares after her for a long and thoughtful moment, eyes raking her body as his fingers fidget against the cuffs of his sleeve, and then, with a deep breath, he's off again, stalking his path back and forth across the room. Theta used to feel giddy upon seeing his nerves -- upon scenting his blood in the water -- but under the current circumstances, it leaves her mouth dry and her throat tight, even though she demanded this transparency herself. It is not the balm that she expected. After all, the assassination is Koschei's plan. For all the shared tricks, for all the friends turning gears in hidden places beyond this room, everything hinges upon Koschei. 

He may have sold her on her true power with breathless whispers and begrudging praise and a sure touch on her skin, but she is not the linchpin of this endeavor. The most that she can claim is a mind for criticism, a quick hand with electronics, and a willingness to lend her strength and love to him, if and when he asks it of her. 

On paper, it looks like nothing. 

But Theta knows that to Koschei, it feels like everything. 

So she tries. 

She leans against the back of the couch -- burying herself between the worn and tired cushions that have seen many a visitor -- and pretends that talking about her fear was enough to deprive it of its power, for her to dominate it and fashion it into a useful tool, instead of allowing it to dominate her. 

She pretends that she has always been the sort of person to wear their scars bared and to open their heart to love and acceptance and confidence. 

She pretends to be the person that she has always threatened to be, but never actually was. 

It only faintly occurs to her that she might very well be that person now, that long-awaited change has finally slipped beneath her skin and done its work, that her lingering fear does not deny her of accomplishment and power and a sense of poise that had so long been drowned beneath a churning sea of sorrow and anger and guilt. Storms always pass, the clouds always part, and eventually, the sun shines through and quiets even the most desperate waves. That very same sunlight glimmers off the clothes that she's draped herself in for the day -- the clothes that she borrowed from him -- and her eyes keep catching on the electricity that sparks against the deep blue of Koschei's raiment. 

A storm buried beneath a calm surface. 

He wears it better than she ever could. 

Theta does not know how much time passes in silence -- how many times Koschei has wandered the same ground over and over and over again -- but eventually, he speaks. 

"I need to get the materials for your part of the plan from Ushas. It'll be a rushed job, maybe, but we have to take out the cameras in the area, eliminate all possible evidence. Most people will be too far away to see clearly. The venom will be subtler than a knife. Less eloquent, but easier to play off as not our fault."

Theta nods when he pauses for breath, her own eyes fixing upon the floor as she tries to imagine what that day will look like. 

She should've bothered to attend some of the grander events that she was invited to in the early years after her victory. Or turned her eyes to the television once in a while. She barely knows how either ceremony -- the wedding or the crowning -- is normally conducted. 

"Most of the people on stage should be ours. Our wedding, our bridal parties, our --" 

He pauses misstep, pivoting to face her. "Who's presenting you?" 

Theta shrugs. "Can't I present myself? It's not like I ever had a family. Not really." 

Koschei's hand works at the empty air in front of him, ushering the train of thought forward. "Yes, yes, yes, I know that, but the more people we have, the more confusing it will be. Pick someone, anyone. From home or here. They don't need to do anything except give you away." 

Theta's hand drops to her side, picking idly at a stray thread that has worked its way free from the rest of the upholstery. "Anyone?" 

Koschei's tongue wets his lips. "Anyone." 

Theta sighs. "I want Graham, the cab driver." 

For a long time, he was one of the only people who bothered to reach out to her -- who bothered to remember who she was before the Games, instead of just focusing on the monstrous act that defined her play within them. She's willing to tolerate the embarrassing nickname if it means that she can have someone at her side who wants to be there. 

Who  _ deserves _ to be there. 

Koschei nods. "Fine. I'll send word to the District. He should have plenty of time to get here. Wedding party?" 

Her answer is both reflexive and immediate. "Yaz and Amy and Romana." 

"Romana's busy."

"I don't care." 

" _ Love _ , I --" 

Desperation edges into Theta's voice. She doesn't want to face rejection. Not when she's only just begun to trust people. "What could she be doing that's more important? We haven't even seen her for  _ days _ ." 

Koschei stops his pacing, dropping to his knees in front of Theta. His hands settle on her thighs as his chin tilts upward to allow him to gaze at her with eyes frosted by both apology and adoration. "Romana," he says, choosing his words with care, "Is handling the problem of those who might succeed Rassilon. She has been ingratiating herself with them for years -- her closeness with Rassilon's administration is part of the reason why she was denied her promotion -- and she needs to be with them when Rassilon falls." 

Theta's mind buzzes, and her pulse flutters beneath Koschei's palms. "Is she going to kill them?" 

It is difficult to wrap her mind around the idea of Romana killing anybody, but then again, it is difficult to wrap her mind around the fact that Rennette has already slaughtered a great number of her fellow competitors in the Arena, and she wasn't even offered a choice or a cause or anything worth fighting for aside from herself.

Koschei's splayed fingers inch slightly higher. "If she needs to." There is a pause, a tilt of the head, an averting of eyes. "But she would be with you if she could, I'm sure. Yaz and Amy can be arranged for." 

Theta swallows, and offers up a slow nod. She doesn't like it, but it is not a point worth arguing on, not if she wants to be a pillar of strength, rather than an impulsive and emotional saboteur. "Okay, fine. Who's on your half, then?" 

White teeth gleam in the dim light. "A couple of Capitolites to whom I owe a favor." 

"Can we trust them?" 

Koschei arches a single eyebrow as he lifts his eyes back to Theta's. "Are you asking if  _ you _ can trust them?" 

Frustration swirling, Theta stomps her foot against the carpeted floor. Koschei's fingers tighten slightly to anchor his touch. 

"Is now the time for semantics?" 

Koschei's smile lingers. "There are more people dissatisfied with the Rassilon's presidency than you think, love. Our operation is not a small one, even though you keep sweeping in and changing it." 

Theta's nose wrinkles. "It's not my fault you don't think things through." 

Koschei straightens, moving closer to Theta, and swipes the pad of his pointer finger playfully over the tip of her nose. 

"At least I think about things other than raccoons." 

Theta opens her mouth, ready to speak her mind, but a knock at the door interrupts her. 

She feels Koschei's flinch more than she sees it, and in a rush of cold air and empty space, he stands, racing to unbutton his waistcoat before tossing it over the back of the couch. He untucks his shirt, too, ripping two buttons off in the process, which are quickly devoured by the room's shadows, as good as lost. 

Before he crosses to open the door, he casts his eyes over Theta. A firm hand tousles her hair, leaving it messy and windswept, and he runs a finger over her bottom lip, displacing an artful amount of lip coloring. 

The knocker strikes again, only to be caught with their fist frozen in midair as Koschei finally opens the door, adopting the victorious, sultry air of the recently ravished. 

Yaz stands in the doorway, clad in clothes that were surely meant for her apartment and nowhere else. She has been absent from the betting rooms for sometime now, as is customary for those mentors who find themselves mourning the loss of their tributes. 

Her eyes flick between Theta and Koschei nervously. 

"Can I come in?" 

Koschei pulls her through without bothering to answer, closing the door behind her, cutting off any and all prying eyes and listening ears. 

"What is it?" Theta asks, leaning forward in her seat, bracing her hands together as she fixes Yaz with a piercing, nervous stare. 

"I, um --" Yaz starts, voice shaking ever so slightly as she reaches into her bag and pulls out a folded letter, passing it to Koschei's waiting hands. "I received this about an hour ago." 

Theta merely catches a glimpse of its contents as he opens it. The page is lined with interlocking circles, more art than language. It did not occur to her that this rebellion of his might have developed a code, but in hindsight, it makes sense.

Easier to go undetected, that way. 

There is a long and awkward silence as Koschei reads the message. 

When he is finally finished, he sinks into the vacant seat beside Theta, and buries his head in his hands. 

"What is it?" Theta asks, eyes bouncing between friend and fiancé as she waits to see who might dare to answer the question first. 

Koschei remains silent, but in his absence, Yaz clears her throat. 

"Ushas is under investigation, and she's been temporarily removed from her post. We don't have anyone else in that office." Yaz trails off, leaving the consequences of that action unsaid. 

Voice muffled by his own palms, Koschei fills in the blank. 

"Rennette is on her own." 


	52. Chapter 52

Theta and Koschei rush to return to the apartments, stopping only to spend the rest of the gathered sponsorship funds on food and water that will be dropped to Rennette. 

Koschei pens the note this time while Theta nervously hovers over his shoulder, diverting congratulatory handshakes on her partner's behalf with a combination of annoyed toe-tapping, forced smiles, and bristling stares. 

"Gather your strength. Good luck." 

At this point, there's nothing practical left to offer Rennette. No reminders, no advice, no weapons. All Theta and Koschei can do is hope that the training was enough, that Rennette's will to live is enough, that whoever has stepped into Ushas' temporary vacancy won't do anything exceptionally cruel to the remaining pair. Normally, the final two tributes are left mostly to their own devices, but historically speaking, there have been a handful of exceptions. Sometimes the Capitol has a vendetta, and sometimes they just want a better show. 

Theta has yet to see to see the actions that led up to today's slaughter. Her focus is shattered into a million fractals tossing glare in every direction. There is so much to do and so little time in which to do it. Nor is their situation helped by the fact that every time Koschei brushes a hand over her waist, grabs onto her hand to guide her through the tight press of the crowd, or leans in close to ask her a question, her mind and senses are filled with him and only him. 

It is terrible. 

It is wonderful. 

It is an inconvenience. 

It is the only relief she has. 

The world is dark, and he is her light. 

Despite the near constant distraction, Theta’s mind succeeds in dispelling the fog ever so slightly once they reach the relative sanctuary of their rooms and the need for close proximity has been somewhat reduced. 

Theta turns her back to Koschei as she slips off her borrowed clothes and changes into a roomy shirt and a far more comfortable pair of trousers. Koschei, on the other hand, does not bother to hide from her while he changes. Now that he has exposed the gnarled knotted scar above his heart, he no longer seems to feel the same need for secrecy or shame. 

Theta's eyes linger on his body for a long moment before he catches her stare in his. An embarrassed consumes every inch of her skin and she retreats to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, leaving the clothes in a pile on the floor. 

Someone will pick it up eventually. 

Someone always does. 

She pads around the kitchen in bare feet, opening and closing cabinets as she searches for everything that she needs. Normally, she would've just called down to the kitchen, but she doesn't want to see anyone else right now. She's already overwhelmed enough. 

As Theta waits for the water to boil, she idly dips a small spoon into a jar of honey and pops it in her mouth. Honey is a luxury that she would have never known were it not for the Games, and she savors every self-indulgent drop of it before going in for a second spoonful. She half considers forgoing the tea altogether and pouring herself a sickly sweet cup of amber liquid, but she succeeds in exhibiting at least a small amount of restraint. 

Sweetness clings to her lips as she continues to wait, spoon still pressed against her tongue, even though its contents is almost entirely gone. 

She doesn't hear Koschei come up behind her, and instinctively flinches when he places his hands around her waist. 

"You told me you didn't like tea," he purrs against the curve of her ear. The tickle of his breath against her skin sends the air from her lungs. 

When she calms herself enough to answer, she speaks around the spoon in her mouth. "I didn't like you. There's a difference. And besides, I heard tea is calming." 

"I don't think any tea is strong enough to ward off our current worries." 

Theta merely shrugs. Her shoulders brush against Koschei's chest as he pulls her tightly against him. 

"We should watch it," he says. 

He doesn't have to clarify what ' _it_ ' is. 

They both know. 

It is devilishly unfair that Theta should be caught in such a demanding cycle of emotions. Half of her wants to give herself fully to the love and physicality that she feels towards Koschei, without guilt or pain or fear, but the Games and the assassination lurk just over their shoulders. Bloodshed is a shadow that they are unable to shake. They are embroiled in it, tied up in it, inexorably bound together by it. Their lives are just as beautiful and just as terrible as the brutal victories that saved them all those years ago. 

They live despite the violence. 

They live _because_ of the violence. 

The kettle whistles, and Theta nearly jumps out of her skin, treading on Koschei's toes on her way there. 

The spoon falls to the counter with a loud clatter. 

"Careful, love." 

Koschei’s hands move to her shoulders, holding her steady. 

Theta allows herself a moment of stillness, pulling her attention inward and focusing on nothing except heat and touch and light. She's gotten better at holding herself together. She no longer goes to pieces in the face of even the mildest of threats, but she is not perfect. 

She is not fixed, nor does she need to be fixed in order to be whole. 

She does not need to be fixed in order to be worthy of living. 

She does not need to be fixed in order to be loved. 

Koschei's fingers roam down Theta's arm, tracing the branching lines of her scars, and she melts beneath the touch. She forces herself to relax, falling further and further into him until his support is the only thing keeping her standing. 

"You okay?" he asks, concern rippling through the words. 

Theta nods. 

Koschei’s hands shift as he turns her around to face him, laying his palms flat on the counter as he eradicates what little distance remains between them and draws her into a deep, all-devouring kiss. 

There is honey in her mouth and mint in his. 

The two flavors mix and mingle — each tempering the other into something both more powerful and more palatable. 

If Theta could place time on hold, she would be tempted to linger here forever. 

Eventually, however, Koschei draws back. Dark eyes ardently search hers, no doubt looking for the resentment and pain with which Theta would have once met such a gesture, but she does not expect him to find it. 

Theta averts her eyes after an eternity's worth of pulsing heartbeats, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip as she attempts to draw herself back into the current of the Games. 

There are things that need doing. 

There are murders to execute. 

There is a wedding to plan. 

There is a little girl to save and Ushas can no longer help her.

And as much as Theta might want to forget those things, and as much as they scare her, she forcibly drags the conversation back to the place where it first started. "Yes. We should watch it." 

Koschei rips his gaze from her and nods. Pain and regret scribe themselves in the lines that span his forehead, but Theta resolves not to read too deeply into the expression. Being paranoid won't help anything. In fact, if her track record is anything to go by, it would only hurt them both. She's learned to hold it back as much as she can — to borrow Koschei's ability to feign cool even when he's falling apart inside — but sometimes there are cracks. She papers over them periodically, but eventually, the seal always seems to break, and old habits sneak back. 

But the more she practices, the better she gets. The more faith she puts in Koschei, the stronger she is, and self-awareness, though not infallible, is a far better balm than stubborn indifference. 

Theta turns away from him, pouring boiling water into her cup and throwing a tea bag in closely behind it. Though she ought to use a clean spoon to add more honey to her tea, Koschei’s breath on her neck is too immediate and she is too flushed and too careless to bother pursuing even the most fundamental courtesies, so she uses the dirty one again instead.

Koschei gives Theta space as she cups her warm mug in both hands, retreating into the parlor with both hands shoved firmly into his pockets, where they can do no further damage. When they sit, she is careful to position herself slightly away from him, draping her feet over his lap as the only point of contact. Though she needs a physical reminder that he is with her, that she is not alone, but she does not need to be entirely consumed by him. 

For his own part, Koschei busies himself with pulling up the broadcast, cycling through options until he finds the highlights of the replay. The projection shimmers — catching more air than wall — and Theta finds herself gazing through it, rather than looking at it. Thumbnails pass in a blur, barely registering as images before they’re out of sight and gone from her. 

It’s probably better that way. She doesn’t need to concern herself with any part of the Games that does not involve Rennette. She just needs to know what they’re getting into. She needs to know whether or not Rennette truly has a chance of coming home. Theta needs to know what she and Koschei should say when the girl is finally lifted out of the Arena and steps off the hovercraft — what words will keep her from falling into the same cycles of pain and suffering in which both mentors have been trapped for over a decade. 

Rennette not only needs better than that, she _deserves_ it. 

Theta guides her tea to her lip and takes a hesitant sip. The liquid scalds the roof of her mouth slightly — leaving a spongy, papery, tingling sensation behind, and her face contorts with displeasure. Perhaps she was right, back in their home District, all those weeks ago. Maybe she doesn’t like tea after all. 

With a sigh, Theta leans forward and nudges the cup onto the table, abandoning it altogether.

“Are you ready?” Koschei asks, glancing over at her. 

“No.” There’s a pause and a breath as Theta fixes her attention on the screen. “But that doesn’t really matter, does it?” 

A hand finds her ankle, and Koschei’s voice softens slightly. “You don’t have to watch it if you don’t want to. I can recount it later.” 

Theta’s lips purse as she shakes her head. “No. I watched the other one, I can watch this one, too. What kind of a mentor would I be if I can’t even watch the Games?” 

“The same kind of mentor you’ve always been.” Amusement curls around Koschei’s words, and though there is a hint of mocking swept up in them, the cruel bite that he once would have injected into the statement is entirely absent. 

“I’m better than that now. Mostly. Kind of.” She fidgets slightly as she speaks, picking up her cup again just so that she has something to hold. “Trying to be, anyway.”

Koschei merely nods, and with a press of a button, the clip plays. 

It takes a moment for Theta to grasp the orientation of the space. A girl — District 9, maybe, though Theta tries not to look at most of the Tributes or learn their names — pads through a grand, hollowed room in the ruins. Orange sand is swept into piles against every corner, creeping up the walls every time the wind blows, blindly searching for an exit. 

Theta doesn’t see Rennette, not yet, but the girl turns and nods at a companion who is also moving through the room. It is a boy, gripping an axe in one hand. Theta doesn’t think he’s from the girl’s District, but that’s not particularly surprising. Alliances are common in the Arena, and they don’t usually break down until everyone else is dead. Unlike the girl, he moves along the walls, keeping tight to the shadows and ducking beneath window sills to remain unseen. 

The girl is bait. 

This is an ambush. 

And though Theta knows the final outcome of the play, she still catches herself holding her breath. 

That is the trouble with the Games. Even though she is rooting for Rennette’s victory, she still cannot stand to see all these other children suffer. 

It’s not fair. 

_None_ of this is fair.

There is a clatter as a slew of rocks fall somewhere unseen, and the girl whirls around, pointing a crossbow towards the nearest exit. 

No one enters, but that does not mean that no one is there. 

The girl does not move, standing as still as a statue for an interminable length of time. Near the wall, her ally remains crouched, moving only to adjust his grip on the axe, prepared to swing it if necessary. 

There is a flicker of movement as they both tense, and then the camera cuts away, focusing on a figure in the rafters, watching the two figures below. With featherlight steps, the trickster moves from beam to beam and stone to stone, unseen and unheard. Once she has a good view of them both, she draws a knife and prepares to throw, but a scream cuts through the air and tightens her grip on the weapon. 

It’s a chilling sound. 

Even through the speakers, it sends an icy rush streaking through Theta’s body. 

She knows that voice. 

It’s Rennette. 

Theta didn’t think she got hurt, or at least, it didn’t  _look_ like she was hurt when she saw the aftermath. For a moment, she wonders if she and Koschei should have sent along more medicine instead of just food and water, but no one had mentioned — 

The train of thought is derailed as the camera cuts away again. 

In the center of the ruined courtyard outside of the grand room that the other tributes just occupied, Rennette stands over a mess of wires, with a detonator in her hand. A glint of metal shines at the point where everything joins together — a single central conductor — and Theta recognizes it. It’s the necklace that Koschei had helped Rennette smuggle into the Arena as her token. 

There are fresh holes dug in the sand around her and hastily covered, filling the space between ruined and broken statues and the paralyzed corpses of long-dead trees. 

She takes a deep breath and screams again. Louder this time. 

Rennette, too, is setting herself up as bait. 

Theta’s heart thumps in her throat. She feels Koschei’s thumb idly tracing looping arcs on her foot, writing out the ghosts of half-formed thoughts. The key warms beneath the collar of her shirt, fighting to hold her steady. 

All at once, tributes burst from their hiding places. 

The girl with the crossbow rushes through the door, as does her ally. The girl from the rafters drops from a blow-out window and lands in a pile of sand. From across the other side of the courtyard, two more figures burst into view — sprinting and breathing heavily, struggling beneath the weight of their packs and the many weapons slung across their backs. 

Rennette’s screaming stops. 

She bridges the connection in the wires with the press of a makeshift switch. 

And the ground explodes. 

All of a sudden, Theta forgets how to breathe, burying her eyes in the surface of her tea so that she doesn’t have to survey the carnage again. 

The cannon sounds. 

_ Once, Twice….Three times…Four times…Five times.  _

It is not the first time someone has relocated the explosives that are placed beneath the platforms from which the tributes begin the Games. They are designed to keep anyone from getting a head start, but they are never removed by the Gamemakers. Disarming and rearming them again is fiddly business, and more often results in the deaths of those who attempt it than any real success, but if anyone could pull something like this off, it would be someone from District 3. The technology hub.

There is a faint smell of smoke in her nose, and for a moment, Theta thinks that she’s falling again — dragged backwards into her own memories at the sight of a slaughter repeated — but a smoke detector beeps. 

Koschei scrambles to his feet, darting into the kitchen and turning off the kettle.   


“You’re going to burn the place down one of these days,” he says once he renters the room, flexing his fingers to dispel some of the surging adrenaline. 

Despite her constant despair, a faint smile graces Theta’s lips. She lets go of her cup with one hand and sweeps her arm out wide, indicating not only the two of them, but the projected screen and the single, unexpected underdog standing in a field of fallen bodies etched upon it.  
  
"Isn't that the goal?" 


	53. Chapter 53

Theta and Koschei’s night is entirely defined by sleeplessness.

Despite the exhaustion that has worn on them since the start of the Games, adrenaline keeps their hands and minds busy. Time is no longer at their fingertips. Once the sun rises and the two remaining tributes are forced together for their final confrontation, what lingering control Theta and Koschei’s have will slip beyond their grasp, and both their wedding and the assassination will be at the mercy of Rennette's health and recovery. 

That is, of course, if Rennette even wins. 

If not, Theta and Koschei and everyone else who is involved in their coup must grieve and bide their time until next year, though the very thought sends the foul taste of bile towards the back of Theta's mouth. Even with Koschei's support, she is not sure that she could bear this again — the violence, the anxiety, the frantic waiting. She is barely holding herself together as it is. It constantly makes her wonder how Koschei weathered this all these years alone — the pressures of mentoring, the knowledge that the children in your care will almost surely die, no matter how well you trained them. 

Not for the first time, Theta wishes that she had been a better person, that she could have been there for Koschei and Romana and Amy and all of the tributes that came before Rennette and Sparrow. Rose, if she were here, might have smiled and bumped against her shoulder and said, cheerily, that “It’s better late than never,” but that is not strong enough to stop the rising tide of guilt that constantly threatens to drown her.

To keep herself above water, Theta focuses solely on the tasks at hand. 

Before Ushas’s arrest, someone managed to deliver the box of requested materials for the electromagnetic pulse device, and Theta dumps the entire contents out on the bed, sitting crosslegged in the mess as she begins her assembly. She fully expects the task to take up the entirety of the night. Not only is it complicated, but she has never constructed something like this before. She knows the theory behind it well enough, but that’s not the same thing as digging her hands in and making one. 

Failure is not an option, but the fear of it dogs her movements with lethal tenacity.

For his part, Koschei floats in and out of the apartment, writing messages in that mysterious, circular code, sealing them in unaddressed envelopes, and then slipping out the door like a shadow. It is not difficult to imagine messages and instructions rippling through the many arms of the rebellion, passed along like loosely kept secret. Briefly, Theta wonders just how deeply this plan runs, just how many people are involved, but at this point in time, such questions are meaningless noise. 

She doesn’t need to know. She only needs to carry out her part of the plan. The time for doubt and questioning has passed them by — gone as quickly as it had come. 

Throughout most of the night, Theta and Koschei have little contact with each other. Each time Koschei prepares to leave the apartment again, he plants a kiss on the top of her head as if he’s looking for luck, and she glances up with him with a tight smile and a murmured word before bending back over the wires and ore and switches and batteries. 

Building the device is challenging work — a puzzle where she knows the idea and the solution but none of the steps in between — and she finds herself undoing her construction at periodic increments to start again. 

It is only when morning begins to draw closer — reminding her that deadlines, though uncertain, are looming — that she begins to feel confident. This should work, and barring interruption, she might be able to finish it before they have to stagger back into the betting rooms for the close of the Games. 

As she gets closer and closer to the end of the project, tasting success for the first time, fingers moving quicker and quicker as momentum drives her towards the finish line, Koschei steps into the bedroom, stifling a yawn on the back of his hand. He assesses Theta’s current progress with a thoughtful sweep of his eyes before saying, “ We should get dressed. We should be in the rooms at first light." 

Theta glances up for only a moment before turning her eyes back to the unfinished device. "I can't. It's not ready. I'll throw something on when I'm done." 

Koschei's sigh floats gently across the room to her waiting ears. "We have to be presentable. Especially if we win." 

"You can be presentable enough for both of us, I'm sure." Though Theta knows that while they remain in the harsh spotlight of gossip and weddings and potential victory, she cannot hide behind Koschei, she still thinks that if she pushes hard enough and talks fast enough, she might be able to sidestep the more fiddly and annoying aspects of her responsibilities.

There is a brief pause as Koschei’s hand falls away from his face, finding temporary solace in a pocket. "Would you like me to help you?" 

Theta's nose scrunches, and even though she doesn’t look up at him, her eyes still narrow with barely contained skepticism. “How exactly do you expect to do that?”

Koschei does not answer, instead walking towards to the bathroom. Theta hears the door slide open at his touch and the jostling of drawers and trays as he searches for what he needs. A moment later, Theta hears the door close again, and the mattress shifts beneath her body as Koschei sits down beside her.

His breath caresses the curve of her ear as he leans in close and gathers a strand of blonde hair between his fingers. “Like this.”

Once, Koschei's hands had shaken in her hair, his touch featherlight, his muscles barely capable of conscious movement. Now, however, his fingers are both steady and deft as he loosely braids a lock of her hair and coils it into a small bun in the shape of a petaled flower. Theta tears her gaze away from her work long enough to gaze at their reflection in the glass of the window and the darkness that lies beyond. 

"You're better at this than I am." 

A chuckle rises from deep in Koschei’s throat as he pries a hairpin open with his teeth. "I've had more practice." 

The pin scrapes against the delicate skin of Theta’s scalp, sending a delightful shiver rippling through her, and she turns her eyes back to the mess of wires in her lap with no small amount of shame. 

She finds herself thinking back to that day they spent at the market together, the day when hope and laughter had buzzed through her body and against all odds, she had really, properly joked with Koschei for the first time. He had plucked a flower from a vendor and handed it to her with a flourish, and after an hour or so of contemplation, she tucked it behind her ear. 

His eyes had not left her that day. 

And it had been the first time in a long time that someone had given her something beautiful just because. 

Koschei gathers up another lock of hair and does the same thing to it, nestling it beside the first.

“Why flowers?” Theta asks suddenly, turning her eyes back to their reflection with curious intensity. 

Koschei hums a question past the hairpin in his mouth, looking for clarification. 

“Everyone else always looks at me and sees death and suffering and storms, but you give me flowers.” 

The pin leaves Koschei’s mouth and finds its place in Theta’s hair. 

“Because I am your fiancé, and that is what fiancés do.” 

The statement is spoken so glibly and with such untempered amusement that Theta simply cannot accept it as truth. She drops her eyes back to the project, looping wire around metal as she continues to push him. “For a vainglorious bastard like you, nothing is ever that simple.” 

“Vainglorious bastard? Really? After all we’ve been through?” 

Koschei repositions himself on the bed in order to reach Theta’s other side, and an intervening hand brushes against her jaw as he urges her to tilt her head towards him. 

She indulges him. 

“I only say it because you are.” 

Koschei tugs at Theta’s hair playfully, and she elbows him in the stomach in response. He soothes the hurt with a small kiss a moment later, and she can feel the curve of his smirk against her skin as he mumbles, “Fair enough.” 

Theta patiently awaits his explanation as she drives a screw into place. 

“Wildflowers are the first things to grow back after a fire or a lightning strike or any other disaster that might befall the land. It’s about time you had some to call your own.” 

Theta swallows hard as her mind races, struggling to process the thought. Her fingers tremble slightly as she desperately attempts to continue her work, but hearing kind things said about her — and from Koschei’s lips, no less — is still so unexpected that it shakes her to her very core. Perhaps if she had been raised on praise and happiness and love, she might be less affected by it now, but as things are, it never fails to scramble her mind and rewire her body. 

Indeed, she is so shaken by the declaration that she accidentally closes the circuit. 

The lights in the room go dead. 

The hum of electricity stops. 

Koschei’s hands leave her hair and move to her waist, and she feels his body shift as he looks around the room. 

Heat builds as the air conditioning grinds to a halt. 

Or, perhaps, that is merely the tension between them once again coming to a head. 

“Well then,” Koschei remarks, a whisper against her ear, wright beneath the place where the flowers lay, “I’d say that little thing works, wouldn’t you?” 

Theta moves her hands apart, but it will take time for the lights to come back, for the power grid to restart, for the air to cool. 

She will have to install a proper switch once she remembers how to breathe again, but for now she turns her head and draws Koschei into a kiss so deep that her tongue writes her gratitude onto his mouth. 

Words have never failed her so profoundly. 

And in the rush of mint that hits her tastebuds in return, she feels the cool rush of hope that she needs to keep those wildflowers alive in the face of whatever awaits them once morning dawns and the lights return. 


End file.
